Morgan's Mind

2005-01-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

In my dreams last night I was sitting and watching armies gather across the ravine. They were not many, maybe two hundred. We thought they would stay, though the bridge was hardly guarded. Then, I heard pipes play, wailing many voices calling and saw that they moved. I called the alarm and went to change into fighting clothes. Pink silk shirt and bare feet. Knife and sword. There were two other women, and we made up mother maiden crone. I called out to the Scottish leader who had just come across the bridge. I walked up to him and told him to stop. He laughed and asked for our names. I didn’t know one girls name, I think she was young. I forgot my own name, and only knew that I was the daughter of a king, a princess. The older woman (to my surprise) I knew to be the famous new age author Skyhawk battling bare breasted. He tried to take them, and they wanted to go to him, and I ripped the spell, took them back and we fought. I dashed in on the right side, stabbing, and even when I sometimes tried to just wound, I would fail and strike a mortal blow. In the shoulders, in the back, in the chest, like butter, like flesh, greased with blood. In my dream I fought an army, and won.

2005-01-17T01:30:00.000-07:00

Well now. It’s falling quietly, like mist does, and blood. This is a secret room, but mine is not yellow, it is breathing colors out like tears, it is shiting them and sighing them. These colors of mine. Never before beheld by man, or woman, or spirit dog. I don’t think that you read my letters anymore. I am speaking my heart here, in this place hidden, like the piece of oyster shell under my tongue for dark moments. I have been looking for one bedroom’s. Tired of this stretching boring life. My friend does not look at me, and I do not look at her. Something is sick there. At first maybe it was my anger at her having friends in many forms that I did not, and then maybe it was her anger and sadness sitting till three pm not leaving the room, and now it is just sickness, and I don’t feel welcome, and I want to leave. I want to leave and live alone and risk being lonely for the rest of my life. Leave and live being the key words. I think in one weekend I could pack it all up, and leave behind all the things I don’t want or need. One bedroom for art and one for me. Romantic living. He was hungry and hung up quickly. It hurt too much to just pretend to leave, like we sometimes do. Funny how no one mentions if they read here, and why would you? This is like looking at my bare upper thigh; beautiful in some lights and terrifying in others. But no one sees this corner of the sea- no one but stars and lost fish- wandering till they meet and become blind rock clinging jewels. It’s cold in my bedroom. It’s cold like the head of a drum that plays nothing. There is no spirit here that I am invited to. I can’t smoke with you? I can’t sit in the dirt and I can’t stand to clean anymore? I am ill? I am dying? I am hurting and all you can say are sarcastic things? Do you think that anger will be better? Do you think you lack the power to wound me? I feel forced to hide here. I feel forced. I have enough nick knacks to fill a place now. I miss my sister. I want so much for someone with some context to talk to me. I don’t know these people I’ve been forced to I feel lonely and no one real calls, and my shallow seas I have been making, rivers flowing down my neck to collar bone damns to belly lake, I can’t have them anymore. It is time for drought, please. Or time for real rain- light? Just edging the air with the smell of grass? Do you remember what I looked like when I smiled real? Can I starve myself to death? Taking speed and sleeping for two months made you look good. Bless you for being smaller then me, for being the height of fashion, and no, there is nothing you can say to make me think I am acceptable here. There is only fear here, and my magic left me, and my goddess abandoned me, and my eyes have been clawed out by crows: I am typing by touch. Label me bread and blood. Label me hairy and self loathing and mordacious. Label me because I forgot my name. Did I have one, once, in some corner? It sat in that groove at the very back that if you push you cough. I am afraid of being surrounded by the false. I am afraid that I am false. I am afraid that people have turned their backs on me and that no one will speak to me. There is not a silk scarf to be found- only polyester and rayon blends. I wish I were trapped in India, and that I found warm moist winds quietly pulling thin cotton over my arms. Some how there I would forget what beauty means- thus obtaining it. There I would drink and eat like there were butterflies in my stomach, and lions in my heart. There I could sleep with visions. There I would have a teacher, and I could grow accustomed to knowing love is not real or necessary to the heart. Is there not enough love in our hearts for the line of horizon and the dip of a does back? How could a boy take up more room, or a child, or touch? It will fall gentle to death, the night air, and I’ll stop breathing there, like hope does sometimes. Like hope.

2004-12-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

It’s the end times, the dark days, the conclusion of a reality that we can possibly feel comfortable in. It is a death of soul, and we are not allowed, based on our level of pitiful faith, to see beyond the veil into the light, if there is light. We are floundering, we are pressing against the bonds. Old ropes made of tight woven hemp, but they haven’t been made like that for a while. Now they are nylon and Teflon and when we stare at them the fire in our hate makes them melt, and the old ropes are strung with sweat, dripping eons into the lake beneath our swollen feet. The lake has become salt water where it once was pure from the earth. The lake has grown algae because of the tiny bits of twine flaking into it. The lake has been filled with our shit and piss for so long- and the ropes are breaking. What could this mean?

Cleaning is in order- and it is all done in the dark.

The minions of God, the seraphims and men in garb lay out the tools for cleaning. This wont hurt a bit- just hold still- don’t be afraid, we’ve seen the other side- and trust us, it’s not as bad as all that. Not too bad, not too bad. Just remember to hold your breath until the pain in your chest is worse then that in your heart and mind, just hold your breath till the screaming stops, and then it will all be quiet. They lay out the tools in the last rays of lights and it all- goes- quiet-

Do you have a poem for me? I want one that is a quiet rhyme, something old as our language that used to be spelled (if it was ever written) with “y” instead of “I”. Tap it, in code, on the inside of my palm, the one cupping your neck to protect it from stone and fire. Don’t worry about the meter of it, the smooth telling of it. I will say it until that’s here. Those old ones always have their own walk, and it will sing to me- you’ll see. When it gets shades darker, when it’s black on fire without light on black, and its lasted two eternities of love, I will whisper it in your hair, and your dead body will come back. I’ll hold on, but you let go now, I’ll find you with the old spells, the ones that made the world.

It would be a bad winter. They had no idea when the flashing electric things said it- a bad winter indeed. Too many had forgotten how to call the sun from his resting place, the one on the underside of nowhere and halfway south of yes. Science was not of sacrifice and love now, and once it had been such a promising religion. Once it had echoed and beat its breast and given men for the cause- now it was like sheep to the slaughter without the heart- and the sun got tired. The bonfires were lit the day after- after it had all been gone over, and the people were reverting back to “primitive ways.” Lit on beaches and rooftops and parking lots. In the streets between the looting and the weeping there was fire. Poor replicas of him. Like hand cut wood ponies stood up next to Zeus’ mount. On the day, on that peak where he had to decide, he was always a little curious to see what would happen next. So many of them had screamed into the night in the old days, feral and hot with pain and lust, that it was always a wonder what they were saying and how they would change. Now, they were quiet, on the day of deciding, this year, no curiosity was peaked, and so, he took a long deserved rest from the ungrateful people.

The candles burned down on time- right where dawn would take over. But the long false dawn turned out to just be city lights. Even those lights went out soon.

She knew it was coming and had left instructions for the few of them that were to be left. Endless night brings endless night terrors. Humans had perfected the art of burying the fears deep, deep, deep. Now, day after day they did not surface in their original form, but in the horrors of lack of love and cruel indifference. Vampires, werewolves, and devils were easier to fight. All the dead sisters of the world conspired to draw out the poison with a long night. The night fears would grow closer, would not be swallowed again. How could they when the light of day was never there to wash down the pain of it? Soon the night would be filled with proper fears, manifestations of man that could be put down with those primitive tools, and the chants. They left instructions for the few, just before they bound the sun in a silver rimmed box and dropped the key on the left side of Saturn.

She panted as she labored- heaving and pushing and screaming. The hospital was overly sterile, she had said. At the last minute she had begged for it to be home. She couldn’t bring him to the world with florescent lights glaring through his eyelids. Couldn’t- wouldn’t. She ripped the air with lung bellowing pain. She sliced apart fantasies of what she was, and twisted her fingers into the bed sheets to hold onto the room. She thrashed then and laid before her was the great joke, sweet truth, and unkind knowledge of creation. For a second her eyes turned wild with it and someone yelled, “PUSH!” and she did and it was done.
The first born who would never know sun.

2004-12-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

I've been working on poetry. Possibly it is not the best read, but its the writing I have been feeling most often. This is a series of dreams over the last week, layed out in dream wandering with some room for reflection. hope you enjoy...

I: It rang
rushing
Fusion of tiny wings beating
green veined sight

“We will die into kmart” to translate into “We will die till we live next”

Translate to “we will die, and there is tomorrow”
(her hand was there, matted into mine,
and I watched her while being crushed by the dead)

“we will bleed into Sunday”

fuschia feathers left spattered on ground, twirled in fingers, calling “I know you here”
outside the gold plate room of old lust, dusted
constant shifting cover, denial of

crimson on the ground

“I am orphan song, and I am hunted” haunted and haunting

Remembering back to seeing, not seeing, given sight, held sight, hold that sight
here

Boats along the shore creaked, soak light, winter dry
Blue cracked paint fracturing walls
Into white
Into egg shell pale
Found broken on the ground
With specks of broken yoke
Eaten out
Watching flies settle there
Seeing each texture of the sidewalk burial ground
Cradling again that blue

Listening as orphan

Wondering at color

Remainder: a feeling of light, despite the deep edged shadow of it, the way we moved there, and traveled again and again to well tramped space must surely mean something thrice in as many nights.

II: It was no surprise to see friend turned to enemy
It was expected by all parties

Diamonds rooted discussion
He entered with a tribe of dark
Weapon bound

on

wont you sleep with her hand faking warmth?
waking world walking on tacks imbedded in cloven heel

Beads flowing over her aching milk (gone to heaven with sour thoughts)
Played with by unfaced persons
Discontent snarling the laughter
not child
not orphan

no betrayal
Just a voice taken through the throat

she was wearing white

entered into heavy lidded tight sleeping vodka
entered into after prayer to wax mixed blood and afterbirth
entered into with calm discussion of where the body fe/e/ll

later there would be redemption
we could see that we would be passed over by death,
just lay and give in

another cause to wake

III: curled in him
jealousy in the front seat
Taken
into valley of shocking lines
A town that stalks

Birthed out of the mountains sheer now in sunrise
he is revealed

lamp posts leave darker bruises then normal
and places of shadow absence are somehow sharper then even high desert should allow

there is something waiting now

She slit herself almost to open
Inch deep past ribs to hip
Ash skin
Pretty body
Marks of before

Now my stomach and this time blood
But shallow, in drafted marking
Art blade
Then quite in a voice of action
Seek love

IV: forgotten in the caravan
Lost inside the mind of others
Shaped by wild twist hair art

No wedding dress and a thousand dressing room dances

Choice

Shit expelled during the birthing process

No one looked up from their scones as she came in shamed and thin

baby was not asked after

Still/born rebirth, age 15
“I will not be known by my parents”
Age 3

Hope

V: mapping out the case of nights now, like revisiting a landscape known, can recall lain out by the sense, the motion/direction of the stars. I’ve walked thirty to a thousand miles west of here, and south too in a place that calls me like red rock and houses built of living stone revealing secrets.

Will you write me a love letter in Aramaic?
Will you hold a cross to my navel and whisper to god?

Those stones are falling to the memory of light, always color, the climb, journeys to mountains, just outside of now, getting the space. How long I’ve been walking in this other waking world. They join at the outer rim of their limbs like Siamese triplets dancing to the sitar. This landscape of my body, held outside. I feel unraveling, leaving the body in sideways postcard password movement.

Each time I meet you there it is innocent quiet longing.
Light plays there.
Where you in the house temple made of rock?
The monks of a place and you among them.
The monks were fetching something, and for a moment, it was just wind in the valley where open clouds looked through us.

It resonates like only deserts do.

2004-12-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

And then they came home drunk, like some kind of demons, doing everything to make their dicks hang lower, despite the cold of it. I watched them sway and listened to them slur. They came home with stolen goods, and I was hot with rage. My sense of humor was lost after eating bad food, and watching romantic comedies, and painting. It was lost after Friday was lost, and we, Friday and I, wandered down some snowy street, clinging to what we each thought the other should be, and trying not to fall. If the police are called I hope that I am asleep. They are perched on the roof, like gargoyles without words to spew. My body is aching with all of this tightness, like the skin on my spine cant relax, cant go back to its birth state of origin calm. Meaning to gather up supplies and escape, and now the quiet doing of it seems impossible. They will taunt me, they will tease me, called me pussy when I said I would rather sleep. Bad word, I name you female, and they don’t think about it, like I do every time it comes out of my lips, they just spew it. Pussy. Bitch. Part of me wants one to fall off the roof, to take the fun out of their game. Its just a biter bitch thing, must be the kind of thing that a pussy would want. I’ll feel bad now if it happens. Don’t die, I said. I gave them instructions before I hid away. Before they climbed up and out under the sky. Maybe they are braver then I thought, to be naked to themselves in the sky like that. To watch themselves in all their stone glory. But they wont remember in the morning. They never do. I lost my taste for drunk where ever Friday dropped me, near a bus stop, when I felt forgotten, because my ride fell through, and I had two bags with one that kept digging plastic ridges into my neck. Stop digging into my spin like that. Stop hating me so much. Stop wanting to forget, and for god sake, stop obsessing. There may be no way out from here on in and when we find the exit there will be an issue creating the space to let you all go, so if you choose in and not out and want to forget about the whole thing and just check out then we can just separate peacefully here. He said, I think that I’m coughing up blood. He said, look at my tycoon profile, and I smiled, and then the other said, and look at me with the Rasputin eyes, and I wanted to cry again. When, before she left, we were passing the cig and I had wetness on my face, and I said, I hate this shit. Not now, not now. It only makes me feel more lonely. It only makes me feel more like there is nothing I have ever really touched. It makes me feel more like I haven’t talked to him in weeks or months about anything I really felt and it reminds me that I am dying every day a little bit and that my writing is not being read, and that my mind is not being challenged, and that I don’t have the will to challenge it myself, and that I am in some sate that means no to some of the most important parts of love, and that I am afraid. Fear. I wrote it in the snow, and in his drunken state, not knowing that it was my stick writing in the snow, he wrote yay above it, and I thought, well, yes. It is that, and it is not that, it is everything that holds me away from everything that I could know and be, and it is that thing that lets me see and feel that I am being held apart. One more inch to go and maybe I will be able to go baby sit, because they need to be sat on, and wouldn’t it be funny if I went out on the roof and I was the one that fell? Wouldn’t that be hilarious? It would be a karmic thing to occur. They howl like wolves, wolves stricken with panic of the banality of life in captivity and with out the real passion of knowing that they could be free if they only grew thumbs. Well, that’s it then, getting older, dying, never really feeling real. But you cant maintain that feeling anyway, so might as well just get into a sodden second place with the right drugs and spit on the rug, and smoke your cheap cigar inside, so that no place is clean, clear, empty, not even my space, that I do selfishly carve out of this world.

2004-11-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

Writing Manifesto One:

To Define:

Writing is a form of energy,
an art,
a magic, a life, a live growth, a death, a page rewritten over and over,
a stalk answer,
a new flesh,
a set of something that can be transformed because it had permanence,
a tangible reminder of mind before and after,
a trap,
and a freedom.

We make symbols that have meanings that have been decided on by no form of government, no democracy.
The choices of meaning emerge like a dream: layers of velum years, thin sketched skins laying out an echo of “yes” and “no” and “maybe” while we sleep. The history of us can be found in the roots of a word of patches of time and no time and picked up created time.
We are communicating through magical markings, which paint within us the colors of forgotten interaction.

Writing is a way of attempting to translate the word of God, the message of reality, into something that we can hold and pass down without having to touch another human being with the false sounds and miscommunications created by the tongue.
Writing is a mistrusting of oral thrusting of meaning.
A profound fear of the body.

To Use:

A: As we are gifted with this other form of energy transfer,
where I can touch you in a subtle tone of sound without having to ever meet you,
as I can brush my hip into your palm without ever smiling your way,

by way of the black etch of lines,
now I can transform your reality from a distance.
Spells are written down.

B: But there is a jumble of thought, and there is a babble Babylon within a mind and we use word tools to sort out something solid that can then be woven back in.
Bile re-swallowed, cud chewed over, because we are never done with the process of digesting reality.
I use this to generate a matrix of understanding of what I am seeing
that will never be encompassed by any set of syllables.

C: With these paint box writings I can sing finger ridges and combine them to make previously unknown meaning.
They are expressing a yearning to kiss something,
and they are manipulating the way I let you view me,
and they are entrenching us into seeing through the lens of a history that
we no longer wish to claim.
Every coin has two sides, this verbose blade has two edges that can cut.

D: To teach the meaning of this means showing an otherwise hidden freedom and fear, means revealing the non meaning, the lack of contact and the insane new intimacy (I will be rubbing your mind) for what it really is. To teach means to reach beneath the skin of reality and take an invasive sample, to test against the light of experience, as well as the dark of it. Writing is the physical act that joins the boxed in thought to the aching fingers, a disconnect, and a reconnection, to the way we feel what is and is not.

To End:

But, in honesty, ignore the sounds of this manifesto, and the vibrations left over, as they are, only, just, lonely, words.

2004-11-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

America; on lost love and spacious reframing

so I cried
while watching a sliver of luminosity

unaware vividness had been imbedded

eaten away in shadowy zealot humor

couldn’t halt, change the direction
the current of hope,

a construction
of valor and invalid
it was all down hill,

and cupping shaking hands around that
quickly leaking liquid
getting into the earth
make a damn out of weeping
mud of loss and wonder, slight,
some binding matter
brought to the alchemic game
sacrifice of heart

to bring about a space to
move into
a scream call animal feral
begging for my blood
and the fear that comes before the knife
will the baby America accept my gift
draining so many

stronger and more robust
ebony and curvy

for a glowing seraph

unsure of which sharp surface to use
which mouth will best feed

if standing down, I could not look
into my daughter’s eyes
to tell her legends of red princes and peasant warriors
if I could not sigh at my last gift
without repeating every myth made
without weaving it to her

when her hair will look brighter with bird feathers
and snail shimmers across her left cheek

noble because we cannot sleep now
there is no time for unraveling
we wait a breaths space and it is desert
lines, arrogant projectiles,
dig in
bite into us

and I cannot have her eaten

I cannot have her consumed by fire
she will be my last, only, resting place

2004-11-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Note Book Poems Committed to Coding Slightly Edited:

Poem 1:

All day and night
I’ve been narrating this story.
Like the subtle difference between
Worlds and words.
And the reality that universities
Are named institutions.
My handwriting is rough like
Napkin sprawled imprints
Left behind
On undeserving stationary,
And I’ve pushed myself
Against a smoky heat rippled wall.
Its so quiet now, without
The frantic manic forced
Hoards of two.
A still night when nothing gets blown away
And I end up staining my nails with nicotine

I can feel you nervously
Standing on some abyss edge.
I feel finger breaking steel wool rasping
Away some layer and I am unsure
Who you is.

An epoch poem seems like wasted years
Bouncing on the knee
Of a child molesting
Old man time.
-sadistic fuck,
Laughing at everything stolen-
Is this the one to blame?
But he’s not here now, as the alone
That is deafening.
Plummeting into tense shoulders
Recently recalling the tingling fingers on flesh.

Where does this go
Except to an impossible silence?

Poem 2:

There is rain, and then I think about my fathers death
Still waiting in the wings
Haunting the mortality I will know
I watch the way rain bounces,
These drops
Halting
Stilling
Birthing
Listening in on people
Moving through the wet.

And father must believe that it had to be made
And not-
He must believe,
If he believes in anything,
That passion
Lust of mind
Leaks like toxins into
Blood
Body
Soul
He must have thought to generate it.

In an intense complex look in the pupil
Strained blues and wound grays
Begging for me to feel it
The smoldering thing that he buried
The fresh light he saw
And I buckled under that heat
Was branded by this idea

And there is a thank you here
And a curious hot anger
That must be fueling
What he wanted

Poem 3:
I did a study of you
For two classes
Trying to draw you out
The lines of you
This sharper jaw
This curve of lips and nose
This picture that I cannot master

My friend met an idol the other day
Laid prostrate at her feet
Begging for some translated experiential wisdom

We approach the other
Like sleeping moths
But wonder at our forwardness.

Poem 4:

The Memphis sunset was
Fast and wild
Inching away as I watched
And I laugh
In an endless airport hallway
When you arrive in the night
This bent dark is all you get.

Poem 5:

Touch this
Brittle and soft
Wickedly fragile
Gently here
Underfoot
Ignore her
In the beaten
Cotton dress
And slivered
Sitting and watching
From that dirty transit
Stop along your way
All lines come and go
And she is still
Its dry here
And the wind cuts
Less
It is plastic
Steel dipped
Formed to a
Raw place
She’s used to that
Powder held together
With full blown
Sighs

Poem 6:

I want to hum my pain to you, and you would hear it fully, the slime fear of me, and if you run, I will know.

Sing something else too, about deeper thumping crashing, racking me when I walk west.

There was a day
Cool blue melting behind wild silhouettes, becoming white pink orange curving branches arching
Sexual leanings against a silken whipped sky gentle fringe of gold swaying weakly in the wind
And dipping
Deep into a forgotten green, wicked dark and subtle shadowed with highlights through the bleak
Level mist with black branches hanging in their space.

That day it was all painted
Hung in my vision
Waiting for you to pluck
From the corner of my eye

Poem 7:

Sheer sounding metaphors whipping
Into the room- shallow high pitched
Wallowing whistles- drunken love sounds
Made by wet animals in the near dark

Some kind of spinal shot shiver
Running through the space between arm hairs
Puncture wounds of breath

The way eyes move in purring arcs
Lacking desperate wanting
Embodying sugar spice salt

lost beams of light
Trapped in the outstretched limbs
Of a lined palm

Fractural yearning shifting
In cool scales
Re-layering into
Naked curling water cheeks and
The forgiveness in this

2004-11-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

I have thought to stop and write for a moment. Stay here, in this warm office, and think about things- just for a second. Its been quite, ad long, and busy, and dark. Last night I attended a slave and master ball, attending as the master of my dear roommate. How does one become a professional dominatrix? Is it possible that this could be my summer job? Doubtful, but fun to think about. It was loud and smoky in the club, pounding music vibrating the drinks littered across the table. Balloons were scattered on the floor, and when you held them they buzzed with sound. Industrial sound, with baby Goths and various costumes finding a place in the night. We stayed almost till closing, and watched while the dance floor had fewer people, and the lights lost their edge. I got to strap two people to a giant X with chains and gently, with the utmost care, beat them. I was also approached by a man who wanted to help me remove my shoes and “walk on him sensuously”. How often in one life time is one approached with such an offer? I of course complied. This will be a brief entry, since I need to go catch a bus for home, but I wanted to place in amber one image:
There is a light that flashes over a boy across the room. He is slouching in his chair, hair straggling around his face. His black coat is covered in buckles that catch the light intermittently. His lips are painted black, and his skin is pale, and there are few people on the dance floor. He looks impossibly sad and distant, and I laugh at the ridiculousness he embodies.

2004-10-25T01:04:00.000-06:00

It’s been awhile. My thoughts haven’t been coming together well of late. They’ve been sticky, harsh, like eating honey and tobacco. Like being in some winter sleep, and the dreams have been getting darker. My life is a loose rendition of hibernation right now. There was sunlight for a few weeks, the smell of life, but it’s gone. Quiet. Dark. Sleeping for the winter. My bed got colder, so that now I have to wear pajamas to sleep in. They twist around me, cotton ropes leaving red brand markings of solitude. I whisper to myself these days, wandering from pep talks to threats, digging questions to words of encouragement. None of these self driven conversations seems to do any good, but when I am queried directly, someone close, wondering where I have been, why I am so quiet, why I don’t come out anymore, I cant form the sentences to explain it. I don’t know. I don’t know where I go in the winter days, the bone aching days, other then to rest in a dark chill earthen place, an urn under the ground, and I don’t get deep energy, and I don’t dream good dreams, and I thrash like I am trapped, and it only brings the walls closer. I don’t know if this is a common winter occurrence for others, but it has become the pattern for me. This year I went to it head bent, knew the day, the moment it began. The night before I had a nightmare about drugs and a friend closing in on me in a tense and frightened moment, and when I woke I was wrong, and it was dark and cold, and that was the end of summer. I can see it this year, which I suppose means learning. In years past I have closed to it, fought it like I depended on it, lashed at myself feeling burning pain like a near approximation to the harsher side of light. This year I am bowing my head in a combination of respect and loathing, and it’s the best I can do.

I drove away from the airport going fast, like I needed to escape the sucking feeling. If it wasn’t quick, the rented car leaning hard into the turns, I couldn’t escape the vacuum in my mind and heart, and I would run into that black with desperate seeking for him. The CDs changed three times in the hour drive, looking for something to sign scream to. I ended with a lesbian girl band because there was nothing else for it. I’m writing to him right now, but as if he isn’t going to read this. It is a convention to bring in a larger audience to a conversation meant for one. The mountains loomed over me during the ride. Scolded me, and made me smile. I smiled too, between confusion and salted water which kept running down my face. I laughed at my memory of him, I tied it into a bag at the base of my navel to hold like light for dark hours. There is a curve to the brow where I laid my finger, and it shudders in light. This perfect dip of him, motion without moving of him, the gentle brown glow that haunts his skin, when I laid the print of my finger to that flesh I could feel a hum of ideal communication between ridges and soft fuzz. I cannot translate what it said, as I am not a poet of that stature, but I ache to hear it again. I was confused here, in my winter walled cave, reaching out and finding bright love that I almost shielded my eyes from. I know that I did not reach out so deep, but know that it is because my arms are so tired, my eyes so used to dripping blacks of now, but there were moments while he was still asleep in the morning. I would wake up like it was my birthday laying beside me, and I would find my heart moving with quickening pace, and I would watch him dream and stroke his brow and wonder at the glory I saw there, see there. How can it be, when my soul knows that such beauty is in every wavering moment of life, that it comes so clear with him? Why does his frequency make me open my eyes again? But then he was gone. I mean to thank him, because I am unwrapping memory gifts one at a time this winter, and laying them on my tongue, then they will melt into me, warm soft mint/cream/sweet life. It will get me through, even when the dark is needy.

2004-09-30T20:09:00.000-06:00

Listening to the debates. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? THEY ARE ALIENS! Its the only thing that I am willing to believe. It hurts me. I found myself drinking and yelling at the radio. I'm still drinking, but I'm yelling less, because I called some people and started blogging instead. Damn it. Damn it. New question. There are clearly major policy issues between the two of you? Do you feel that there are serious character issues that should stop Kerry from being president? I admire... blah blah. My concerns about the senator are that as I listen I hear him changing his position... you cannot lead if you are sending mixed messages... that’s my biggest concern about my opponent. I just know how this world works, and that in the councils of government you need consistency in the president. Damn. Yup. There you go? Reply, I acknowledge what the president has said. We do have differences... damn. Take it. Take it. The flip flopping- you can be certain and be wrong. Good point. You can fucking change your opinion. See, that’s a good fucking point Kerry. Finally. Certainty can get you in trouble. Then Bush, talking about his core values, not shifting to issues. Cant wilt to that pressure. I've never wilted! Says Kerry, my position has been consistent. Blah blah blah. We didn’t need to rush to war. If you are elected president, what will you take to that office that is the single most important threat to the US? Nuclear proliferation. Good answer, since that can destroy us, easily. Terrorists. This president has not secured it, made us secure. Cut the money for it, Bush did. Send the right message. Fucking talk to them. Fucking talk to the people. We are researching nuclear weapons. We are going to stop nuclear proliferation, and we are going to create and international group to make it happen. No, we've increased it, about 35%... What. Where are these getting their facts? Do they have them? Damn. Need another smoke. This is terrible. Now there are words like freedom, and there are words like china and russia. Now there are words like chief and war and weapons. You see this is the rhetoric. This is the truth. I'm a pretty calm guy. We looked at the same intelligance. The issue is.... those words really have to mean something. 200 billion dollars. Closing statements. My Fellow Americans. We love this country. We are different. Respected again in the home. Soccer moms, this is for you. Troops, this is for you. Let me look you in the eye. I will defend it. We are strongest when we reach out and lead the world. I'm talking about winning. I also have a plan to win the war on terror. Strong alliances. I beleive that the future belongs to freedom, not fear. GOD BLESS AMERICA. Drift towards tragity. Intelligence, millitary, all volunteer, we will spread freedom, the liberty, free iraq, plead in silence for libterty, hard work, challenges, valley of peace, stead fast and resolute, keeping our word, supporting our troops, can achieve the peace we all want, MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS OUR GREAT LAND.

This is the future. A string of rhetoric, of blind thought. I could have written stronger arguments. Did they distingusish? Thats what NPR asks. No. No. Damn. Lets have something new folks. John Kerry is not someone who is consistent? Mixed messages, core values, his rhetoric was far less harsh. Scott? What do you say? Did the American people see that? Kerry said that he was strong. I dont know if it will work, says Scott. What are we doing? What are we thinking? Is there something better? Can we hope? Can I hope? There seems to be nothing real.

2004-09-27T23:15:00.000-06:00

We sat in the court yard under a tree whose branches dipped low, and as we sat she said she felt like my secret lover, and I smiled at her words. I like her, in her pink cowboy hat and airy speech, speech like she is choosing her words from a basket of petals. She has a son and is alone here but for him, and her smile is genuine and slow. I asked her about this child as thunder ripped open the clouds right above us. Another friend, in a red t-shirt which stood out bright in the cool dark of the day, joined us in the cove and we heard the tale. Rain began, finding some path between the thick leaves. They will fall soon, those green hearts with holes drilled in them by hungry life, and we will all be exposed, or else stay in. I began in the court yard in the winter, when everything was barren. It was a cold place, where cement walls towering four stories closed in the dark. As spring came it became a wild space despite the trimmed grass, despite the kept roses. As spring came the court yard seeped into me like sun. Now I know that I will watch it die, as I watched it birth light. It reminds me of my death, and the rain poured down cold, no sun cutting through these fall drops, nothing to cut the wet knowledge of it all. We ran inside once we finished smoking, and climbed the stairs to the top. These stairs are the kind that refuse to be numbered. During any given week I will attempt to count them as I travel up, and by the time I reach the puddle of sun created by the massive window at the peak of the spiral, I will find that my mind has wandered to other places. I will snap back without the mysterious number of steps I lifted my legs.

Its time for me to sleep, get my mind ready for the next day. I have been dreaming about candy melon and running and hiding. I have been dreaming about science and having to make things up on the fly. My dreams have not yet replayed the act of teaching, but I have no doubt they will begin. 11:29, which means I need to stop and sleep, but that moment up above made me pause, and so I wrote it into the world again…

2004-09-15T13:49:00.000-06:00

Response to:"It's not that I care absolutely more about writing than reading. I'm simply saying that virtually every other course privileges reading over writing - treats input as central and output as serving input. My only hope, it seems to me, of making students experience themselves as writers while they are in the academy - and a slim hope at that - means hanging on to at least one course where writing is at the center. When other courses in the university make writing as important as reading, I'll respond with a comparable adjustment and give reading equal spotlight in my first year course. I mght even make that adjustment if only English department courses made writing as important as reading, but of course they don't. Isn't it odd that most English courses study and honor writing (literature), but seldom treat the act of writing as central? The only course that tends to make writing central is the one course that most English faculty don't want to teach." (Elbow, 1995, Being a writer vs being an academic: A conflict in goals. p. 75)

There is a battle ground: on one side of the field, black red sky hinting at a bloody dawn ahead, there are books and giant reading eye balls. .. on the other side of the field there are addict-skinny people holding pens, and looking slightly manic as they try to create reality on scraps of old newspaper, and the bark of trees, dipping their quills torn from black birds into pots of charcoal ink made from burned books. The battle is about to begin...

Do the people that came before really know more than I? Must I bow to them, read their every word and hang on their possible meaning? Cant I find a sense of freedom by writing out, creating and loving, the truth that is in me? The truth that is in my reality?

But they are part of my history, are they not? As I take in my words I am gaining power of thought- I am gaining the language of the power structure- reading the things that they read, thus gaining the knowledge they had. As I do this it becomes a part of me, a part of my context. This is important if I want to make change... if after I have read enough, I still want to make change...

I can hear Peter pleading, kneeling in front of a powerful hegemony of books, a dusty brown set of men scholars, leaning from some tower, made from some yellow and flaking bone. He is fresh, and unarmored. Nothing to protect his new made skin, his fresh self that is being created while he writes with his daisy tipped pen. He is big eyed, straining to see human in something that has pretended to be inhuman for so long that the academe has become some bird of prey, some cobweb owl, eyes glinting, hard feathers, the library scent when it passes. He wants the light of humanness there, to wander in those halls that used to glow with possible meaning for him. He may be crying, but its hard to tell from way up there.

This strong flash of wings, fast and glinting and powerful. Breathing in space, standing on the winds of a thousand other scholars, streaming through night that is brilliant above the clouds. The conversation is a whirlwind of pressure, moving us up to the edge of human thought. This freedom is about the coming beyond, the leaving behind, as animal wings pump off us, as flesh disengages in the cold, as we emerge finally sighted, and find that everything is relative from this high up...

I personify ideas, I reify theory. I watch as they talk and listen as they make love behind office doors. I notice when they begin to merge in my mind, sloughing off old memories and sense of self, blending into a new person, no longer fighting, but looking out as something different. We need human. We cant say no to it, not if we want to mean something to the rest of the world. We need vision beyond self as well, or the thought exercise of striving for it. I refuse to be stuck in either/or. We don’t need a tower, and we don’t need a cave, we need a fucking house, with lots of rooms, and a really big kitchen table with an herb garden out back. Its the only way to really get things done.

2004-09-13T23:27:00.000-06:00

Even if it cuts into sleep, I need to write. After having read some expressivist literature, I have decided that free writing is a proper use of my time, and I need to keep up on this blog thing anyway. Why do I refer to it as that? Blog thing. Am I reflecting its lack of form? Its hot in my room, a new Orleans night under my thin cotton robe. There is a tired metaphor wave of air moving over the bone above my ankle. Its that space that doesn’t feel like ankle, and has yet to evolve into shin. The light in my room feels harsh compared to the evening light that came to me the other night. I want the white rainbow of colors that washed into that Friday sunset here lulling me into continuing. Today I rode home from a frantic day, a pelted with stones day, and it thundered and began to fall. My legs moved in that rhythm again, the one that is familiar but without word, and I felt the rain hit me, more stones, more rocks. And I rode and raged, got lost in the back streets, and wound my way to familiar territory screaming in my mind, getting sprayed with dirt fresh from the underside of cars. Suddenly there was sun on my right, and darkness on my left, and a rainbow to one side, and writhing clouds and lightning on the other, and I thought, you cant get much more obvious then this. Which way will you go, Morgan? What is really important here? What do you really care about? Do you care about momentary drama, the cosmic play that laughs at your petty jokes? Or do you care about this light? Which way do I want? Where will I go? And I laughed, and rode faster for the lightness, and the rain that sprayed up onto my skin was reborn, once again a drop of water, soiled by the street, dirty, rough, poisoned, flying up again in an arch, flung up for another try before it fell back down. There were muddy drips clinging to my arms, moving through the air, drops that will not fly back down. They will evaporate in the ecstasy of movement, they will drift up still in enlightenment. I dreamed that I could fly between things, if only I could hold onto the knowledge that it was a dream, and if I could hold onto that feeling that I was able, that I was lighter, and when I failed in a move, I changed the way I thought about possibility, and it was done. Nothing makes that world different then this one, but the force of other peoples dreams. I’ll ride again in the morning, feel sweat creeping all over me, seeming to move against gravity in slime salt trails, tiny messages that drift out of me. Listen. I hear it. I cant always feel it, but I can hear that call back. One page. I wont stop till then, till every thought is out, I will not cease this chronic flow of words, that are ideas, and symbols and it all meets somewhere and nowhere. Is music without words? Is the rhythm of it a reminder of where we once were, where we will be at the drop of some fate and fated hat? Silver pen, reminding gift, sitting on my bedside table, next to chap stick tainted with tea tree oil, that I put on over and over to remind me of a lover, and the anticipation of someday again, and the peace that isn’t always with me, and a truth of distraction, which in ways would be easier if it stayed, but best if we grow knowing that we can never get away looking at the small of some one’s back and loving the idiosyncrasies of their whole. There’s that cool air again, bringing me back to here with a tender and waking touch. Music is playing, on that bedside table again, which is what brought me to that. I will not make excuses for this entry, or any in the future. There is one line here that is worth the mild ache in my back that comes from writing hunched over on my bed, and one day I will discover like the lost city of Atlantis, and I will be rich and bottle this moment in my writing, unique for all its sameness. You see, there has never been a moment just like this one, and there have been many very near, so the moment of creation before you exist, before I edit and before I think and before I locate myself in the text, this is now, a moment that wont let me error because I am fully in the pain and joy and wonder of it. Cant beat that, not with a stick or billy-club. There has to be someone to kiss the side of my right knee. It will occur in a pirate moment, that knee kiss skin wanting stolen by some rogue with an eye patch and a blue scar for an ear, and my knee will feel violated, and secretly pleased.

2004-09-11T20:48:00.000-06:00

I’ve been reading, and thinking, and talking things out for days now, and none of it seems to be making a rats ass difference. There is a something about this that makes me angry, and something that makes me feel weak and stupid. Its humbling, and I hate that. I feel so behind, so impossibly behind, and without focus or ability. What happened to feeling like there was always a breeze in my hair, twisting the small hairs on the back of my neck? What happened to me feeling green clean mornings and hot long filled with revolution evenings? There is nothing in this place that I like, and that must mean nothing in my heart that I like right now. Everything I do I think about, spinning like vomit in a can lodged in my skull. That’s the way it feels. Fuck it, there is nothing here that I need or want really. And there is everything. Nothing: Everything. Those are learning-less words, words that are empty and mean little. These are concept words, contempt words, reified to be something. There is no such thing as nothing. Zero is an idea. Everything is something, even those fucking zeros are made up of peoples thoughts, their energy, another empty word, but lets not go there now. So I’m riding my bike and there is a dragon fly floating in the air and moving back and forth, zipping and then gone. I am riding and its like my legs are moving through water, like they are pumping in a comfortable dream, like they are wondering at their own sense of motion. How did sex get associated with comfort? How did I stop loving the way I move through this world? Last night the sky was in a chaotically perfect light that was both cold and hot, the evening dusk that you wait for because it makes memories fade and sharpen at the same time. And I choked back a sob when I couldn’t watch movies with my sister tonight, caught in my throat a caustic fruit. Too many of those, and orchard in this week, dropping seeds of destruction out my mouth because I cant understand, and I open my lips to form questions, and there fall poison. Constantly I wonder If I poison the earth for me, or for others, or for all of us. This anger at me that left me hallow, like I was burned out of flesh, and like I was hated for the first time, and that someone I loved was so angry when I had just sat there blank and afraid. What is this? And there is the smell of smoke and the foggy look of it drifting in the air all around the clouds beams of late afternoon. I want to write until I’m nauseous. I want to write because I couldn’t for a while and it felt like string, balls of yarn tied up in me, and the words just rang and blurred, books being read in dreams lost in the glue of stress. This time its going to be rough, because I can feel the fear in me, touching me sticky. I fear love, and hate, and all these black and white things, like these things are real, like they are not just ideas sitting out there, stalking my every breath. I am making them, and so are you, and there is really a sick feeling that accompanies both, because I don’t understand them really. I found that love is just growing up with someone, is being with them without fear, and really, fear is every relationship in between and over. All on a scale, that I will invent a scientific instrument for, and I will be able to measure love in the world by the kind of fear involved, and who’s feeling it Romeo and Juliet tragic and who doesn’t even care. I am scrapped open this time out, and asking myself what the fear really is, and what I’ll see in that fucked up womb they push me into over and over. Enlightenment: living in the cave or never having to go in again? Or isn’t that just fucking like me, and the world, and all this shit, to put it like that. Black and white. Black and white. Over and over again and I’m sick of thinking this way and I don’t know who to blame because, just like all those philosophers say, there is no one. It is bigger. Its not simple. Even my hate is there, and we don’t understand it, and we cant feel it in our daily eye motions, but we can feel it there being the fear of now. Then there is the taste of the sweet clarity of friendship sipping Thai tea and watching smiles and eyes. And then there is riding again, because today that was the only time I felt clean, while I was sweating and forgetting and wondering about something past this. You would think I would learn, with ink stains in my skin reading out the lesson, and being mad doesn’t help, doesn’t make me feel it more, take it into my heart shaped wound that keeps spurting out me all over the table, right over the desert and the laughs, I find some selfish need to talk, and then I shut box lid, cardboard sliding down, shoe box my words. I put them back in me for something, because of fear. Don’t think that I hate (because I do) and don’t think that I over react (because I do) and don’t really see me because when I look close, well I don’t always like what I find, and how could you? How could you? But I need you so much because I want to be distracted from that slime black worm in my corner, and from here your worm is wearing a rainbow bright outfit that almost covers its stench. I want to make friends with it, but I cant ask you too. When you see it sitting there at night you wont believe its thoughts, you couldn’t understand its writhing idiocy, child savant of loathing and angry words. Your worm looks so nice from here. And then there was a moment where I curled up on a stone block, held my wrists around my knees and felt the pressure. It was the pushing of my self and I briefly marveled at the way my hand held like that, the way I moved into it without thinking. Fear. This fear is just making it harder, and how did I loose track of it so quickly. I am going to stop and really see it more, I am going to ask myself the questions that are in me, because how can I lead if I cant? How can I teach the fake set of words and Ideas that I know are false if I cant ask myself about the reason that I cry. I cry because I am worried about myself. I am worried that I will lose my distractions, and that I will lose the way that I learn things from others, and I am afraid that if someone sees this goo that’s blue and orange and purple, and I feel dirty in mean words spoken, and I feel dirty in my mean thoughts thought, and I feel sick with the pills of ideas that are jammed into my ass, woven into me and I shit out and see the effects but cant find the tit I seem to be sucking, the web that wraps me under some dry strong heat of duty and beauty and what right and wrong means and the more I thrash the tighter I am bound, and when I cut one thread another one grows and its all troublesome and it all means nothing. Should I become a monk and should I become a wandering hippie and should I flee from this path because the sharp see-ablity of it, the way I can see my life laid out and boring and I know that there are all kinds of things waiting for me that I cant see, but sometimes the whole thing is bleeding feet helpless. The whole thing is hog tied to a moving tractor confusing and snot covered sweater sad. I have a few more minutes where I will do nothing but this. And then there was recently the sound of people coming over the radio and they are some kind of hope. Who asks themselves this sick shit? How does it come from us when there are times that we glow like a bright day with a hangover, we blind so bright we give headaches? Sometimes those people don’t help. Sometimes we are just hangovers with cotton mouth and skin that is over sensitive. Will you see me and stop loving me? I am dirty and it can only be scrubbed away by my own sweat spit cum soaked soap of life and knowing. I cant look in a glass ball and see anything other then sand. I don’t see time or love or knowledge. Why are feet coming up? Why clapping and community? Why hands over and over again? What are these feet telling me, these worn things of life. I want to punch myself in the stomach and throw-up all this, which might be what I’m doing, like the taste of your finger as you shove it bravely down your throat to purge yourself of everything, but mostly the spinning in your head. This writing feels like that, ticking to some demon clock that has been keeping me from falling asleep. Its like I’ve been a fucking freshman again, trying to be social, getting into the same traps and conundrums. Getting into the same shit and it took me love and falling out and in and out of it to wake me up that time. Shit shit. My stomach upset, my shit dirty and painful, my eyes itchy and scratching, my skin pink pages, my hair falling out by the handful and I think that I am becoming that worm, because if I wont look at it, it will make me. Its not passive, it whispers all the time how bad I am, and how I have no hope at joy because I am fat and stupid and unable. All the fucking time and occasionally the soundtrack of my life will block it out, but there is a pause in the music, spider bite silence sinking into a shoulder and ripping that stupid happy pill comfort away from me. And then there was something that made me look at the Chinese restaurant walls, a conglomeration of random visuals, like log cabin print wall paper and constellation lanterns and hand drawn political cartoons, and passages from the bible that felt like arbitrary protection from ugly Americans who see another color and assume that you worship some god other then the one, the only, JC. done.

2004-08-30T16:41:00.000-06:00

I just posted a long and well written post, that was promptly deleted. Damn it. Thats all folks. I'm sick and tapped and cant find all my writing. Damn it damn it.

2004-08-23T18:14:00.000-06:00

Where am I? This is my life, I think. I am getting ready to become a figure of authority, a teacher, a prophet of young minds, a guru, a leader. All I am doing, or can hope to do is to get them to understand how glorious writing is, how vital to life. I can’t see how it wouldn’t be. I can’t see how you couldn’t love the sound of it, the feel of it, the knowing that you are creating something that may never have been heard before, that writing can create worlds. I feel weak with nervous fear, and energized by it. In class when new ideas are thrown out, ones that haven’t creased my mind yet, I shiver. My hands tingle and my chest gets tight with possibility. I don’t know what teaching will bring, my being forced to retell, recreate the knowledge that has been given to me. It feels like a test, and a quest, and something new. Can I ask them the right question? Can I awaken them just a little, or get them to question the substance of their reality just a little? This is the question. This is a tiny part of my life quest, and that makes me a little nervous. I’m beginning, not that we are not always walking this road, but I am really starting on something that is a little rocky. Tomorrow I start.

There are other ways that I am tired. I feel like I have been bleeding for a long time, drops of blood leaking into my life, being wicked up by a thousand outside occurrences. There are times when I am tired of maintaining distance, tired of constructing neutrality. There are times that I have swallowed screams, and pushed tears till the people that I refuse to be exposed to stop looking, walk away. I have also kept my eyes open, all this time wide open and looking. I have not gotten much further since the start of this round of eye popping adventure. This round has lasted months, and I have refused to quiet the voices of change and information, but they are backing off in volume. Now I am lying back, breathing hard, feeling the vibrations die off, waiting for the onslaught to start again. It’s like holding onto something that is electrocuting your soul for months at a time, bringing newness, but demanding something back. It’s hard, and I want to shut my eyes for a while, and I know that I can’t. What I want is to take a bath, get a massage, have someone kiss my eyelids, and then have them kiss me more. I want to draw the breath out of someone, and myself, and feel the vacuum of my heart fill with energy of life. Yes, I want an orgasm that leaves me panting and energized, and yet drawn directly into sleep, only mildly aware that there is another person in the room.

And what about the snake? We have a snake in the house that eats things live and looks at you like you are totally foreign to her thought process. Maybe we are giant trees. Maybe we are something that is warm and that massages her. Maybe we are the food that she dreams that one day she could eat. It’s like having a baby god in the house, but very young, the way we are all gods. I was watching an independent film called “what the *&%# do we know” about quantum physics. One of the people who was interviewed in the movie said, “Do I think that you are good? No. Do I think that you are bad? No. I think that you are God.” We are all gods, choosing the realities that we want to feel and see, addicted to chemicals and time and ideas and love and we keep thinking that we don’t have any power here, that we don’t have any magick. We do, of course, but we have to remember it, and feel it, and retrain our brains to accept it. Interesting. Now I need to stop writing for a little while, post this, and shut my eyes. I need to drift into an oblivion sleep with clear dreams of moving. Last night I dreamt that there was a tidal wave coming, and I was surrounded by children on the balcony of the house. We were inland, and all we saw the water of the inland space rise, but that was all. Then I saw people riding a giant alligator, which was a boat and looked very hairy to ride on. It was tropical there, and a dark day, and we watched and I held onto the children. Was it a fear of my hopes being washed away, and it truly being nothing? I think that my fears are ungrounded. I am inland, and several stories up, and the waves cannot beat me down. Get ready for more frequent posts, since I will be at school and online…

2004-08-15T13:40:00.000-06:00

This is a poem that I recently wrote and sent into a journal for publication... its not that special, and I debated if I wanted it up, but, at least this way it would get published somewhere. I am too lazy to put back in all of the word highlighting and spacing which gives it a fair chunk of meaning. If you want it, you can email me.
I just got back from san fran recently, and will start my teacher training. I will be online a lot more, so I should be a better blogger from here on out. Peace, mo.

Cycles of this Heart

She throbs in a relentless cycle.
Circles and loops weaving into incomprehensible patterns,
Yet deeply recognizable.
We are spinning tops.
We are ancient dervishes.
We are eddies in time, repeating ourselves over and over again,
broken records of living moments.
It is said that a fish has a memory of seconds,
and therefore each turn in the same bowl appears to be
a new place,
a discovery.
There is no learning in this.
Flesh bound memories vary;
some are shorter then the koi,
some longer then we want.
Humans are a terrible history of curves,
black on red on war,
genocide on dusty ground.
Some of our most revered inventions have been thought of before;
all the art has been made,
all the ideas mulled over.
But none of this is new.
We live in myths of progress, a sham of lines/lies and upward/heavenward mobility.

I stood beneath a goddess not too long ago. She leaned in her dress of stars over offerings of sweet smoke and oranges, and looked at me for a time. It was my turn to draw a lot from her pile, and she asked me if I recognized her. My hair fell in front of my face; yes, I know you mother. You appear in every culture, you are the stars that show sailors the way home, you are the moon that governs the tides, and you are the cool breezes that bring crops to fullness. She smiled in the corner of her mouth; you know nothing, all this time and you know next to nothing. I drew. She laughed in a crow’s voice, and waterfall sound, as I hurried to collect my fortune.

Then there is you, curling in my chest like a lost dream.
I have been everywhere with you, to the end of my soul and back,
And I recognize this sinking feeling.
I know it is you peeling the skin off my heart,
razor precision cutting into my pattern, slicing yourself in.
This time, with a practiced eye, I can see my hand wielding the scalpel.
I can see me breathing in the pain through blood shot eyes.
I miss you again.

I want to say a spiral.
That we are truly creatures that see when we look,
can make choices and let them play out,
that we are not trapped?

But stand back further and see what is constant.

And stand back still further and see it as an illusion.

Each isolated mote of life which penetrates our handcrafted worlds leaves echoes of reality in us, each second of living forms us in a subtle way, the clay of my soul humming in a new pitch after encountering that slow sigh, singing with a new voice after I breath in that cold morning after.

I know enough to be afraid now,
And I know enough to know it is fear that will kill me,
Destroy my moment of hoping in a world most often painted in shades of brown.
I put a thin cage around my heart.
Under that artful scaring is something
Designed to explicitly keep my own shape when encountering the fierce heat of you.
Wires hold me together now, intricate knot work of symbols and memories,
and you may encounter them as we cut at my flesh.

It is made for both our protection;
a: You will be allowed to find the freedom that you need
without being bogged down in tear-full chucks of muscle.
b: I will be able to remember who I am when I look at you.

This mesh of me, this can be formed;
I refuse to be ridged,
but I refuse to be watered down,
forced to go through a tedious distillation process to recover my essence.
I am trying to step out of that lost cycle,
the time when
I
lose my
rhythm in
the ocean
beating of the world.
But then, I may be stumbling into
some other well worn path,
a road tamped down by a million others.
It is impossible that I am not.

Jesus Christ, even you had nothing original to say.
But it’s new to me,
when I let myself forget.
Maybe there is learning here.

2004-07-25T11:50:00.000-06:00

Sunday. Almost noon. Its cool outside, as days of rain are letting up by still leaving their temperature memory. Yesterday was a wasted day, floating in nothing space. I discovered the meaning of immortality, and found out some interesting things about time, but other then that it was mundane. Everyday can't be ground breaking I suppose. Now I am writing to put off other things, like cleaning and eating and getting more sleep. Writing is good for that. Apparently, if I am ever going to be a writer, I must have a whole bank of unfun things to do in order to write consistently.

Today feels like a turning day. It is the point in which you can really feel the year dipping down. We aren't done yet, but its coming. When I feel the year it is like a Ferris wheel, with midsummer crowning the highest point, when you are in the sun, and everything feels far away and you see forever. Midwinter is the darkest time, when you are forced to look closely at the carnie who is running the ride, controlling the speed and flow of the whole thing. Today is the turning point when we are beginning to understand that we are no longer moving up. Today is one of those days that I need to get organized. prepare for the coming shifts in space time, company, and ways of thinking. I need to tune my guitar. I need to fold my clothes. I need to do some art and get ready.

These are crazy years for us. Strange times of discovery that are floating in and out, when we are risking and making space within our minds for the improbable. In this life, that we are living in the richest country of the world, at the beginning of a century that promises to be the most catastrophically interesting hundred years for a long while, we are forced to still attend to our inner worlds. We are moving back and forward. Time is folding in, and we are gaining an understanding that we have not had time to grow roots. This leaves us free to move and shift in the upcoming storm, but also will leave us to our own devices. Maybe it's evolution. Maybe its fate. Maybe its a rather interesting coincidence. None of us has the perspective to really tell. We are on a tiny Ferris wheel, one cog in something much larger, and in a similar way, reaching into an eternity of tiny parts. In every direction we move, be it out or in, we are confronted with the same patterns, and are forced to understand that we will never get it. But then, maybe there is nothing to get. Maybe we are so centered in seeing, and understanding, that we are not feeling? Maybe the feeling of the world carries more information than the petty observations of the senses, contains more richness then the words we have to express it. Technology is moving faster and faster, and humans are consuming more and more; we are becoming the height of the roman empire a thousand times over. We are walking a thin line. We are all of us razor balanced. We are killing people right and left to stay on this ride, to feed the machine, to cope with the backlash. We are burning brighter then we ever thought possible, trying to glow brighter then the stars, the moon, the sun. We are exploding out with recycled concepts and old ideas made new by the possibility of reality. We are creating a magic play ground. We are gripping something that we don't understand.

Its going to be a fun ride I think. For those that can keep their eyes open, and watch, it will blind into true seeing. On the window of the office, strangely glowing in the current indirect light, it looks like there is a drop of blood. Funny that I never really saw it before. Is that my lack of vision, or that it never existed before I found it? that's the question with it all I suppose. Focus, food, folding, finding, and biking and playing cards with my sister and taking her a treat at work. I think that will be the day, and I bet it will feel good.

2004-07-21T19:35:00.000-06:00

I can tell that I've walked for awhile because my feet feel bruised, like when I try to walk up a river and the rocks become unfriendly. My skin is cold feeling, and the tshirt and jeans I have on are stained. I feel slightly embarrassed about it, though I cant recall where the stains come from, or when the last person to see them way, or when someone might. The wild grass has frost on it. My toes are peeking from under the cuff of my jeans. Barefoot, and its so cold. My hair is down and frozen. There is something in my back pocket pushing heavy against my lower back, feeling colder then the rest of me. I'm about to investigate it when I get the powerful urge to look, to see. It overwhelms me. How could I forget the danger? Even for a second? My eyes whip around me taking in the broken stone and the pre dawn haze that hides something unnamed. I try to crouch down, but am sharply stopped by an icy shock under my shirt, where the skin was almost warm but has been set to numbness by that thing in the pocket. I freeze in the half animal stance, hoping that its not too late. There is a road to the right, but that must be avoided. They come out after dark, but they can sometimes use the roads in others, during the day. There are the remains of a fire. Was it mine? I some how doubt it, but there is a crust of stale bread by the pit, and I inch towards it and then lunge, as if it could escape. My breathing is ragged again. Easy to hear. Leaving a steam path. I try to calm it, breath through my nose. It feels like my nose is running, and I reach to wipe it. Blood smears my fingers instead of snot. Now is not the time to linger. My feet are being cut by the iced grass, and my stomach is saying that I haven't eaten during the journey here, or for sometime before. This place is not for waiting in though. This is the gateway, and those are always bad.

Wind has been lashing me for hours, but the feeble sun of this place at least cleaned the hoarfrost from the ground. The thing in my pocket is rubbing my back raw, but now I am afraid to touch it. I still haven't looked, or felt. Curiosity in this wheel kills, faster then anything that will come at you. Its another cold place. I'm not used to them yet. At one point, when I notice the blisters that are forming on the top of my feet from some cutting hooked burs that are forced on the path again and again, I almost stop to weave some shoes. No. Bad plan. Foolish even. Not here. Not yet. I headed east. Was that wrong? Has it ever mattered. The time before this it was north, and the time before that west. South is always wrong, which likely makes it the correct choice this time. Damn it. I feel another sharp pain in my nose, realize that I breathed in heavy, was sobbing, am crying. Now the bleeding is there again, and my shirt gains easily seen specks of faded red and salt crystals.

I start running at sunset, madly scratching through the thicket that binds me. Or am I choosing to be bound in? Hard to say. Part of my mind is far away, and is watching as I scrape more skin from my palms, observing that I will leave an easy to follow trail now. My mind cocks its head in the direction of my picking up a rock and frantically trying to cut my way out. The mind is a bird now, just pecking away at the little sanity I've held to this point.

I've tried to change the pattern. Everything else has changed, why cant I change the pattern. For the first twenty or thirty times I ran until there was no where else to go and felt my flesh rip off my back never seeing what was destroying me. Then, recently I tried turning. "Face your fears." There was still the vague hope that this was a dream. But I turn around, and there is nothing there, except something behind me. I thought that maybe reality disappeared when I wasn't looking, that nothingness is what was crouching there waiting to devour me. It might be. I cant turn fast enough to tell. I get something each time. Some piece to the riddle there in the back. Lately, I have liked the clues less and less. They started out almost kindly, and have becoming increasingly pushy. This time it is a gun, with one bullet. last time, a razor, next time, maybe some pills. Something I may take. Now though, I am watching the last stages of this round. Until the last minute I am able to stay out of the whole thing. Then, it is burning, and it eats away at my latest feeble attempt To come up with some plan. Then, its just that cool blue light, and on to another place.

2004-07-19T21:14:00.000-06:00

I have been breathing. It is a constant motion which is happening in our whole being, this in... and out... and in.... and out. It is the story of our lives; we take things in, we put things out. It is a cycle, a truth. It is no wonder that breathing, breath, the motion of air in the world, and our bodies, has become such a magick and powerful thing. I have lately been able to tell when people forget to breath. Obviously (for the most part) they are still breathing in the physical O2 kind of way, but they have forgotten to breath in their hearts, in their souls, in their sex, and in their eyes. They just don't think about what they are pulling in, and what they are pushing out. They have forgotten to breath.
So I have taken the last month to begin my recovery, to breath, to wait for the next stage, the following step. It has been harder then I thought, but not too bad. Not too bad at all. Mostly I have been going to sleep old woman early, and waking up young child early, and feeling a little more whole because of this pattern.
It has awakened dreams again.
I dreampt I was visited by demons who stole a childs soul. He was a black wolf with star eyes whom I tamed, but when he ran he took the soul of one of my youths. I learned the ritual to retrieve it, and it had to be done by dawn. Many of the evil ones, not like the world wolf who was just obeying his nature, the evil ones try to hinder me, frighten me. None was a challenge, except maybe the time constraint. In the end, I called the child's true name across spirit planes and called him back, and then I awoke. Seeing the children who littered the dream at work today was a little disconcerting.
Its been a long time since I've written, and I fear that it will be a little more time till I can begin the story I have for you in four parts. I have been shy of technology the last month. It feels like it just wants to pull apart and mess up everything that is floating in this box and out there in the either of computer land. Such a crazy web. I haven't felt totally safe there in a while. Its almost bedtime, and I offered my roommate and my parents dog a walk in the cool night.

2004-07-10T08:58:00.000-06:00

Where have I been? I have been walking in a field. I arrived there after a fire, and a library, and then fleeing through several separate personas, and then the woman who had saved me took the jeep and started driving up. She was going to places that she shouldn't be able to drive, up a mountain, past all the fences. At the top I suspect that there was a view of the ocean, but I never made it that far. The higher we walked after her, the more water there was, flowing in cold dramatic cascades. The higher we went the sunnier the world became. I didn't know how we would cross the raging torrents nearer the top, but we would find that out when we got there. Now there was a shallow marsh in front of us, the kind you get at altitude, only this one sported its own field of wild strawberries as well. It was fascitatingly lovely. I had passed the bottle of salt which was put in my way on our upward journey, now, next to the strangely large berries (large for wild ones, but not mutant, just lush) there sat the bottle. Next two it sat two smaller bottles, one labeled passion and one labeled love. I took them both, assuming I would need both for the journey. Once I took them I woke.

2004-07-04T18:05:00.000-06:00

It feels like there is a dead weight on the world. Everything is heavy. Everything has forgotten how to breath. I had dreams last night, slept till I woke and then slept again. Nothing today was as vivid as those night wanderings, and I spent my day reading comic books and sighing.

This will be a year to remember I think, for the world and for me. Even though there is a grey light out, it feels like night. There is a constant hum of crickets and the veil of sleep is hanging outside my window. The day is punctuated by gun fire celebration of our countries birth. Fitting. Its so fitting.

What do I want to say? I knew that I was suppose to write, that there was something itching in me, that there still is, that there are a thousand words that layer on top and under me, squeezing me till I cant draw air. I want to write about love, but I'm afraid of it now. I want to write about magick, but its darker face is looming behind me. I want to write about death, but it is dressed in pink, and the irony is chaffing me. There is too much. The bonzi on the desk is withered and dead. There are the remains of half a lung laying in my room, where I coughed last night till I collapsed exhausted. There is also the remainders, reminders, of passion in the discarded wrappings of love and sweat in my sheets. Everything is sounding hollow today, everything I look at rings false.

I'll snap out of it eventually, its just I'm in the lull. I'm in the inbetween, where everything is necessary dark. Night of the heart, evening of the soul. I am on break, brief though it may be, from the never ending adventure of life. All my teachers are out on a smoke break, all the guards are home with their wives, all the children are playing outside while I watch from a cracked window.

Who's car is pulling up in front of my house? No one I know I think. Its too fast and white. In college we had a joke, which wasn't very funny. We used to say that all men who beat their partners drove white cars, though not all men who drove white cars beat there partners. It was funny because it proved true when we found out some ass hole who would beat up on his boyfriend drove a white suv. That's also why it wasn't funny. This car is white, and no one has approached my house. I didn't even hear anyone get out of the car, but I may not have been paying attention, as I momentarily slipped back into the light slanting in to the dorm, and us walking through, and a glimpse of someone that I once kissed and later feared. After that first semester I was a little tougher then I was before, not much though.

There is a beer bottle on the desk, half full, a forty. It has been here for over a month. Dead Guy Ale, Rogue. It was left here by a roommate, and is still here, even though I have thought of moving it. Ah. A girl in a purple shirt got out of the car after it loitered for five minutes. Then the car sped off, going too fast for a small kid oriented street. Good bye white car. May all the things you have coming to you return in full. Damn it. I think that I'm lonely. Has this string of people in my life caused me to forget what it is to be alone? Alone is fine. We do alone okay, don't we? We don't need eyes meeting ours, we don't need human touch, we don't need someone to cry to. We don't need. Everything is provided for us, everything comes, will come. Rain will come, and sun and heat. Maybe that's what this day is lacking: full clouds and no rain. It is just warm and heavy. Why do I feel like crying?

I cant make all the rain for the world, and I cant make all the light and heat. I feel I have given away some sort of energy that I took years to build. I feel like I lived hard these last six months, and now I have the emotional hangover to prove it. I feel like a flame that burned high and now is tiny in a damp room. It will pass. It always does. Likely it will pass sooner that it should. This is a break. This is my bed to myself. This is a strange quiet when I was so used to noise all the time. Noise and sound and soul searing pleasure. That pleasure flew away yesterday, and I felt weak and empty when it left.

What more to write, what more to leave blinking from your screen? It has not been bright, but nothing is all the time. The world was not made that way, for some reason I must assume. I will take a journal to the park and watch people moving in their mundane lives and maybe get a bit of a kick out of it. Maybe my sister will buy me a hot dog and I will feel American. Maybe. Maybe I will find some kind of detailed wonder yet unimaginable by my tiny world. Maybe. There is a sound now, it was a horn calling in the day, just like the sound of the horn in the lord of the rings. What a strange thing to cut through the day. It gives me hope that somewhere there are orcs attacking, and that it wont be such a boring day at all.

2004-06-29T21:11:00.000-06:00

I got sick this last week. I was dizzy, and hot, and in pain. I walked through the wedding that I was part of, well, mostly walked, sometimes fell, but that is a terribly embarrassing story that I will leave for another time. After I was done with the wedding I lost my voice; literally after all of my part was done, and the bride was driving away, as if magickally timed, my voice left me. I drove home, almost falling asleep at the wheel (I had not slept for about 36 hours at that point) and fell into arms of friends.
What is the significance of this illness? I believe that my body, my soul, my universe has decided its quiet time. Even while I am entertaining old flames, I am resting my heart. Yesterday I went to work and went home after about five minutes of not being able to talk to the kids above a whisper. I came home to an empty house, and read, and drank tea, and slept. I slept for 15 hours, in that tossing turning low feverish kind of sleep that is almost like a vision quest. In an early dream my roommate and I were in a theatre, and were either putting together a play or something like it, maybe role-playing, and people kept coming in, and a movie was starting. We wandered around a bit, left and returned, and then I walked into a huge theatre, with a movie. I thought about getting seats, but just kept walking. There were multiple layers to the theatre, many screens, thousands of seats, and most of them filled. Some kind of arena. I walked to the south, and found a place that was like a street. People there, smoking, some hippie kids maybe. I then went east into a grassy spot with a tree and lights that could have been filtered through the benches far above me, or could have been stars. I sat down and found that a girl had followed me. She asked me some inane question, and I felt a real question in her, so I asked, "why did you really follow me? What do you really want to know?" She repeated her inane question, as if afraid, and I said again, "what is your real question?" then she wandered off. This fragment of the dream stuck with me through the night. All the dreams were lucid and tight, sharp as reality. I was walking far, and encountering many people. At one point my cheek was touching frozen rain on an old wooden porch. There was ice in the rain, and the cold was so crisp, and I thought, "and who is to say this isn't a dream? That this is not reality?" And I woke again, and again sank into a thousand quick night moments. I woke up at 7am, before my alarm, and my voice had partly returned. Today I have been coughing, expelling something from my system, some fear that I was unable to name.

Tonight I bowed out of going anywhere, and instead put my house in order, cleaning the kitchen, opening mail that I had been avoiding, picking up the house. It felt good, even though by the end I felt a little more fevered then I had before.

I was being quickly taught, and as the universe, my mother, my father, my soul keeper knows, there is a time for learning and a time for thinking. Almost all the questions of my life are out of town or too busy to recall me. Convenient time to be forced into quiet. One of my anomalies has been urging me to seek out quiet, to seek out stillness. Did he know that the universe would do it for me? I doubt it. But, as always, I have been forced into reconsidering: how do I know when my heart is closed off? Is it ever? The balance I had come to was so sure, each new thing being taken in a stride I never knew I had reached, a dance that didn't seem to need much learning. And then, there is something that makes you stumble, or at least, makes me stumble. It makes me recall that I am clumsy at times, with my own heart, and with others. I am not as graceful, or as gracefilled, as I sometimes appear. I am recalling the steps, but I am willing to question their worth. Old wounds are throbbing now, and I doubt they will be long ignored. Perhaps my wildness is done for a time. Maybe it is time to sit on the bench and watch again, as much as I can. The tune of life always gets me up again, sooner then is likely good for me. When I am in a park, with drummers pounding out a beat that is somehow beyond everything else, I will dance until I cant breath, and then more. I will fly in hip moving circles and swing my hair and stomp. I cant help it. I was made to. I was made to be a perfect dancer in some way, and I discover that way everyday, a little. I cant imagine moving back to where I was. The learning that has happened is too deep. This doesn't mean that I am ready for the whole of it yet. Breath, Morgan. Breath and heal. Let your body rest, and it will tell you when its time to fly. It will tell you when its time to dance and sign again. Breath till then, find stillness and quiet.

2004-06-21T17:43:00.000-06:00

There is a honey flow of sun lighting the world now, and I am more composed.
maybe it was all in my head, all the empty space, not in my heart.
no. I know better than that. Its still there, crouching for night and alone.
It felt very alone today, like no touching could ever happen, never had, never would.
Then I sat in the sliver of sun on the edge of the porch and watched an oil on water on air thread dance. Silk untouched by rain or people, playing in the light, and something settled then. Like a rock shifting into the space it will be for the next few millennia, and time is bending in a way that I know that rest is moments, that the winds of the world will shift things again before I can blink. It is my new test, and I am resigned to the knowing of it. For weeks I have been feeling the delicate balance I lived, for weeks I was holding my breath more then breathing, waiting for the straw that broke me, and it came in an omen of sorts. Came or didn't, came or was constructed to look like a coming- only the passage of my life will tell. At any rate, early on Sunday morning, as the earth moved just enough to create a fog hallucination of light, I was being driven home. Out of the dark side of the car, almost home, then I can sleep and find some quiet, came a tiny dog running. The brakes were hit, but not so hard as to throw me truly forward, and there was a bumping and yowling. The howling of pain and shock and fear lasted for eternity and nothing. "What do we do?" I turned and asked my companion, "do we get out of the car?" and then it was quiet. Quiet filled the morning, and then turned to fear of death, death hiding under the safe undercarriage, death lingering in the dawn. We drove slowly away, and saw nothing. The road was still. Did it exist? Was it real? That tiny wire haired thing, trotting along in the morning with no sense at all, walking into the sound and light of a car. What was it a figment of reality? There was so much quiet, no sound of claws dragging frightened across the street, nothing. Odd. And I cant quit stop thinking about it, but it doesn't seem to weigh quite so heavy with the sun out... is that another cloud? Damn it all. Where has my lover sun gone? What sinking metaphor is this? I best prepare myself now; I doubt my lessons are over.

2004-06-21T06:25:00.000-06:00

Today is the longest day, and before it came I waited for it with anticipation.
Before it came.
And it might be the early hour, or it may be the compilation of too many nights spent wandering in a thin veil of distraction woven of lust and non committence,
but suddenly the longest day reminds me,
that we are marked to return towards the dark-
tomorrow will be slightly shorter than this day was,
the day after that as well.
A slow decent into the black and cold.

It began with the clouds stained pink,
and I knelt in the street,
trying to cut in front of the rays filtered under clouds,
leaking through another rainy day,
kneeling while an apple burned in my stomach.
I prayed then, trying to claw my body memory to the cycles.
I prayed with the grit of cars digging through my pants, into my knees,
and while I want to say I felt pain, I didn't.

I was composing a poem in praise of everything, reaching for the lines
that could describe my awe of it all.
I was trying to say how I cant speak of it.
All yesterday I felt the hollow drumming-
I know the symptoms of this sickness.
I recognize it early these days.
Its an empty ache,
one that reads like sand paper attempting to polish rotting fruit.
One day you'll reach the pit of me and I will gleam,
till then its just soft and sad.

While I waited for your blessing,
getting oiled and pitted,
I received its rind bitter taste in my heart,
a shuddering spasm of the other side of knowledge.
I remembered that I have lost another comforting pad of innocence.
I remembered that I am new born, and that those suprises I spoke so highly of,
only days ago,
are the searing off of another layer of blind love.
The ache moved fast then, having been brought to the surface,
and moved to an itching behind my eyes I cant scratch.
Even as I write this the day has grown darker.

While I was questing connection,
I found the surgical removing of emotion.
While I was looking into a myriad of eyes, attempting to know the soul under,
I was hiding.
I wanted to berate one soul for its fear,
another for its subtle lies,
another for its hand in my hair,
another for its lips brushing mine and not meaning it.
All those faults, and a thousand more that I had pushed on them,
those are mine.

Can I ask myself for forgiveness?
Even as I think forgiveness it is done.
There was a humbling that gave me honor,
and then there is the bowing in my own self centered shame.
I can still give you answers, but there is a layer of meaning,
an ingredient of acid, that may now make it taste harder to you.
I want to cry and sleep,
but I am breathing through it,
riding it,
watching it, this chronic ailment.

And this, the longest day;
the longest grey struggling,
the lengthiest hot iron marring of pink flesh,
the day where there is no escape but constant movement,
and that is no escape at all because the inner stillness is lacking,
the day when all I want is to fall back to oblivion,
just for a moment of rest before the storm,
but its upon me, and I am ready, but weary,
and this day is now.

2004-06-19T12:21:00.000-06:00

So, we meet again. Yes, odd that. Its not that I ever really thought that you wouldn't come again, just that it would take more time, more forgetting... but then, that was part of the plan, was it not? Having watched for as many years as consciousness has allowed the ebb and flow of the universe, I expected there to be some kind of a sustained period of waiting... But then, we are talking about surprise again aren't we? We are talking about the moment of realization that, even while all the clues were there, all the inner alarms ringing, there is still something inside that says, "oh shit, I never saw that coming." That moment is a high, blurred by tequila and strange company, spurred on by the insistent buzz of sex, strong scents hardly recognized by the conscious mind, but taken in full by the animal self. Yes, you came artfully, gracefully, filled with sublty and a touch of the ridiculous, and yes, I bow to you, as I always do, always will. You and I will never be equals, but it comforts me that I am made from you, that I am constructed of your soul. I am pleased to note my quiet awe and overall amusement at this new twist of the knife you so gently managed. You are a mystery novel where all the clues are there, and we were just looking the other way. You are the child who we expected to be counted on to be good, caught with crayon line etchings on white walls, and when asked about this transgression, simply smiles and looks shy. You are the secret knowing, longing, darkness and, possibly more important, absence of light, which we stare into time and again. You are the present I wasn't expecting, and you always are, no matter how many times you give me gifts.

I am sensing a shift in the pattern. When I shut my eyes, I am slightly frightened by the sheer force, gale force, strategic force, time wearing water force of you. I know that you will break me. You always do. And there is a calm anticipation this time. I am attempting the art of holding without clutching, of seeing without owning, of looking without judging. As you point out, I am far from a master. Even the masters learn more by your hand, your weave, your touch and slightly burning kiss. You were there last night, in that moment of hot recognition. I heard you laughing behind a screen, watching through the eyes of a jade dancer in wild turning silk. You are laughing each time I look at the slightly swelling bruises, turned upon my skin by friends unknowingly playing the part of refuge- can I feel earthly pain to comprehend the ultimate submission that you request? Can I feel muscles stretched, and until the game grows old, continue to seek purchase, and it is futile, and I still push. It was all a metaphor for you, though I didn't know it at the time. You are so earthly, so base, so acutely acid, that at times you make my bile rise- then I recall the lesson on finding the fearfully ugly beautiful, and I fall away smiling at the slime you drag me through. I lick it and suck it in- lap it up into my soul, ignorant child proving they can eat the vegetables. You mock me, tease me, leave me wanting more every single time, and you are the ultimate lover that I know I will never feel in control of- that I would never want to be in control of. You are the dreams that didn't come this morning, since I slept so little, and that was the sleep of exhausted sex. You are the thin veiled haze on the world the next morning, milking this shadowed day into diamonds of colorless flesh on the leaves of trees.

So once again I bow to you, show my neck to you, beg for you when I know you will be coming, beg just to touch your moment in my every motion. To you I show all my frailty, to you I give all my strength, but then you would never have me any other way.

2004-06-07T19:21:00.000-06:00

Its hot in this room. my computer is sitting on my thighs and radiating unbearable heat into my legs. Any heat is unbearable right now. There are some nights that you are glad to sleep alone, happy to be able to kick and shift and be uncomfortable and groan and get up and take a cooling shower and all that is needed to finally reach sleep alone. Otherwise you would keep that other person up all night, poking them, talking to them, drifting in and out of confused sweaty moments. But that is what summer nights are for.

This weekend I swam in the river. It was cold and I got out and felt pink and new. I felt rocks cut against my feet. It was a fast current, tugging at my legs the way forgotten things tug at your mind. Branches and leaves and fish swam past me in murky water that sloshed over my breasts. My friend and I fought up current, set a goal and made it. Did we revel in that victory? Did we marvel at our own joy and making it? I think that we just stepped onto the ground and continued talking about the ups and downs and grim grins of life. That went as it should have. My feet were tender by the time we rose, and the air that was hot closed around me like a hug of fresh dryer sheet, and I was not safe, but I was content. I have stopped living in safety. I don't know where I left it behind, but I realized that somewhere over the last semester I found that being without any protection made me stronger and less frightened. The fear that I had felt for so long, a comforting lover even when we know its not, was gone, and I was not safe, but I knew it. When we let go of safety we never have to fear safety being gone. We can begin to expect the unexpected, stop worrying about next and maybe. I feel more here then I have for a while. I am treading on knifes, sword edges, and I expect that I will likely bleed before the end, and I expect that I will heal.

I need to start writing again. Anything. I doubt that this is read anymore, but if it is, you might be getting some of my dedication. I was thinking to try to write in the cool of the morning this summer. Wake up at 6:30, do some work, write and pray and be cool. I want to store up that time of alone for when I trudge into a room full of children who are watching and needing. Not that I mind. I play all day, I dance and talk and make up answers to questions. When asked what some thing at the library today was, I told a young girl that it was a retinal scanner to ensure library security. This is good practice for being a teacher I would guess. Too hot to write. I feel like either my computer is melting to my thighs, or my thighs are getting sweaty enough to soak through my case. Time to stop. But I wanted to write tonight... and I think this has given me some ideas...

2004-05-31T19:32:00.000-06:00

Have I mentioned the cabin before? Have I said how its perfect and strange and always interesting? It is. My roomies parents have a cabin that we go to. It is not rustic. It has a pool table and stereo and that sort of thing. It is away though, and that makes all the difference. People come and crash and talk and connect and cook together and read together and sleep in the same room with a friend and it is always refreshing and wonderful. Good good. This will be a brief update, but I start my new job tomorrow, and I am in a good place for it. Did you know that the universe is full of suprises? I did, but it hit home this weekend in a different way. Interesting. Peace...

2004-05-27T11:15:00.000-06:00

So, you may or may not be aware that I am working on quitting smoking. You may or may not be close enough to me to have heard me talk about it, and you may have seen me continue to smoke. This is the thing: I have been going to this very cool woman named Gwen who helps people quit. The process is not instant. In reality, smoking is a complicated thing- it plays a lot of roles in our lives. In order to quit, and quit well, you either need some kind of tragic thing happen to you or you need to understand your patterns, the why and how and when of it all, and then move on from there. I have spent the last three months: delaying, journaling, thinking about, reading about, cutting back on, analyzing, considering, talking, and (yes) inhaling cigarettes. So, I am at a place where I am starting to understand some of the reasons, beyond the physical addiction to nicotine, that I smoke. Its hard to really understand unless you have an addiction I think, but I am processing here. SO what I am thinking about, and may journal on in the following week, is about what smoking really is. I am journaling about why I smoke, and why I might be afraid to let it go...

Smoking is an instant connection. You go out, and there are people there that you don't know, and you ask them if they can bum you one, and you stand and talk about nothing really, but it feels like a connection. You go out with someone that you are curious about, who you want to know better, "want to go have a smoke?" and you have a safe, timed space in which to dialogue. Maybe these are chicken reasons to do it, maybe I could do this anyway; "Want to go for a ten minute chat outside?" But really, smoking is a way to do it within the confines of a society that has little real personal interaction. It is a window, an opening, a line to start on, a ritual of connection. When I go out and smoke with a friend, there is a space to process; "I need a cigarette." Am I really saying that I need one? No. I'm saying; "I really need to talk about something and I want to vent about it and I need some support." In a way, its easier to say it with a ritual- you aren't as exposed, you're not as forward. It is something that is familiar to both parties. Its scary to think about not having this. Its frightening to think that I will have to invent new rituals, rely on new kinds of interaction. If I'm at a party, and want to talk to someone alone, and don't want to hit on them, just really want to focus on them, I could go smoke with them, or ask them to come out with me... What do I do other then that without being creepy? We are a society that is truly devoid of these conventions. Now that smokers have been forced outside, into solidarity, it may even be harder to quit. There will be no replacement for this. Crap.

There is the allowance of a smoke. When I am focused, when I am taking a break, when I am putting something off, smoking allows that. We are a society where if you don't smoke, you sometimes wont get a break. You wont be allowed that ten minute chat, that ten minute meditation, that alone time, that space. I am sitting and taking deep breaths, and yes, they are filled with smoke, but they are conscious breathing. I have never lit up un consciously- for me it is always a space of time in the moment. When I need to sit and read for a second, when I need to get away from work, when I need to have a different environment in which to think, when I need to -stop- and notice what is around me, smoking allows that. There are other things, but they will not replace it. There are other things that I could do that may be similar, but will never, never be the same. At a certain point, I will not miss it some much, and it will not weigh on me, but it will never be the same.

They are cool. No matter what you may be able to say, for our generation, there is appeal to cigs. They are what the coolest bad guys do, and the good guys, and they are sometimes pretty convincing. They can be a shield of coolness when you are frightened;

enter girl in black pea coat. Its raining. She is in a foreign city far from home. There are people she doesn't know, and is unsure of. She is waiting for the train. She stands outside, rain dripping through the corrugated tin roof and smoke drifts lazily up from her. She is able to observe without being strange- she is out having a smoke, with nothing to do but look. She is worldly, not a lost 18 year old far away. She is centered, and breathing, and not afraid.

Enter; there is a hostel in Seattle with a balcony and there is coffee, and you can look down onto the street, over to the market place and sit and watch, while you breath in moist smoke and sip dark coffee, and it feels glorious in memory. Inside is the internet station, and a lover has just written saying that he was wrong, and you can let it all go, because you here, right now.

Enter; walking the wet streets of Freemont, Washington. I am having coffee, its another hour till I get to hangout with people. I have been walking all day. Wandering in a lonely and confused haze. Trying to stretch back into comfort, knowing its lost for the rest of this trip. Best coffee in Seattle, pisha. I had better at the hostel last trip here. I buy a pack of cigarettes, get some stimulant into my system. I am conflicted, and I am confused, and I keep wanting to cry but I know that it is far past that, and there is a space being cleared out in my being for something new to come, and I am journaling for shit this trip, and I have spent too much money that will have to come from somewhere and I don't know where, and I still am in love, but cant get over the feeling love has left me for less painful eyes, love has left for forgetting, and frankly, fuck it all, I want to smoke and stand in the rain and be a romantic forgotten Hollywood heroine, alone and ready for whatever.

I have a memory in grade school which is two memories. I am standing alone on the playground, by the dome metal thing, and its grey out, and the others are lining up for class again. In my mind, I am pretending; it is in black and white and I am tall and have dark curly hair, in a rain coat. The Eiffel tower is behind me, and, yes, there is a thin drift of smoke coming from the cigarette in my lips. There is mystery in that brief memory, and a story, and another time and space- 1940's at its best.

What you may or may not know about cigarettes, is that they are a friend, lover, abusive partner, and devil. They are there for you when you are otherwise alone, they are available, waiting to be a ritual of thought or no thought as you need. They are more consistent then people- they wont leave you, though they may damage you. It is a complicated thing, and not as easy as just stopping. I wish it was.

2004-05-24T20:01:00.000-06:00

There are times that I occationally remember past and future. That sounds cocky to state, it sounds false, and it doesn't really describe the experience. The experience is a feeling of seeing the pattern in the present that paints a clear picture of the time line that we seem to think is real.

It is hearing and it is imbibing. It is understanding the inter-connected lines of life. I was listening to this voice Saturday night, and came to a new understanding of how souls travel, how we are dispersed, how we die and don't. How we gain an extended consciousness, and it was all a metaphor. I could explain it sometime, if you wanted to hear it- the long theory that is that moment of anticipation before we step into an unknown space- a combination that the soul has never before encountered- and it happens a thousand times a day- but is rarely understood I think. Maybe we all have a philosophers stone, and I would describe my revelation and you would only nod knowingly, or condescendingly, and I would swallow and be humbled, again.

Now it is dusk, and I am watching the world grow cool with moisture and air. We are all being swept into the joy of light, the instinctual draw towards a time when we emerge from buildings and it is still visual. I am listening to music that makes it hard to separate my words from those of the song. I am listening to songs about danger and pain and life and revolution and change and love. It is refreshing. I made copies of the CD today to give to my peacejam youth. I think that it is cool enough to impress them, but strange enough to be thought provoking. That's my hope anyway. There is a blue bird that has been hanging out around our roof, and he lets me watch him sometimes. I still dream of someone appearing and taking me to another reality where I am the heroin, and not just another person. Sometimes in my wandering mind I am kidnapped, or called, or a door opens, and sometimes blue jay birds change shape and become something other- something that I need to follow into an adventure. I think that I underestimate the magick of my own life, the power of the moment, my adventures compared to that of an epic, a game, a narrative that we are able to only see the highlights of. Forgetting that my story may be amazing to another person, and now that I am living it, I cant see the truth or tragedy of it.

The sky is candy stripped tonight, a purple storm with pink sitting gaily on top, and then a clear blue that would be frightening to look into if it was someone's eyes. You would know they were either god or the devil- its that kind of blue on top. I think that I will walk tonight. I dreampt last night an old stress dream of going on stage without lines, and I was sure that I could do it, but it was unnerving none the less. Maybe starting a new job. I am always frightened that I will be burned somehow, mess up horribly somehow. Each new thing carries that tension. Maybe it keeps us on our toes, an old genetic trait given to those that would survive new events. Confidence and mild nausea. I am not bolstered. Still, its something. Its worked before. Its all in trust I suppose. Enough, I need to walk into the blueing evening.

2004-05-21T09:53:00.000-06:00

I just got back into town after traveling in the wild portions of central America. Yup, right there in the middle, Minnesota. It was relaxing and a little stressful not having enough to do, but there you go. When that wind-down occurs, that slow resettling into a clam life, a relaxed life, well, it just isn't always comfortable. Good news, at least to me, is that my words came back. For a while after writing for about 5 days for 12 hours a day, I felt drained of language, helpless and unable to speak or write. Nothing came, tapped, sucked dry, and my mind a murk of syllables and meaningless sound. I suppose each sound did have meaning, just none that a society had assigned it. It meant to me that I was done for a bit.

However, these last few days its been returning. Good. Feels like water. I wrote a poem for my mom that I think had some merit. We'll see if she likes it. It wasn't an ode to my mom, it was actually for her to use in a graduation ceremony I think, for one of her students. I tweaked her original rough concepts into something that felt more vibrant to me. May have been a little intense, but I was ready to write again, and it needed to not be done in mild halfs.

I got a job a few minutes ago. I will be working all summer in a day camp with the oldest campers (I am bound somehow to get the older and more rowdy crowd... Its for the best... Maybe I am still learning to love them...). I will be out in the sun, riding my bike, playing in the park, getting tan and soaking up the summerness of the world. My weekends will be perfectly free, my weekdays lovely and late, moving into the evening smooth and joyful. I can't wait. I am constantly amazed at what we receive, the gifts that we are given, the gentle pushes we get to confirm that we are living on a path strewn with coincidence presents. I fly back to town, and get a call for a job. Perfect. Almost too perfect, and I am unwilling to ignore the artfulness of it. As we walk and move and dance in this life there are so many subtle times, good and bad, that are just too close.

I heard about a family that was crushed by a bridge recently. It was up in a canyon, a new exit, still being built. There was a huge cross beam that was wrongly placed. It had been put on its side, and slowly began to bend under its own weight. An architect saw it and called dispatch, but a confusion of language made them think that he was talking about a road sign. The car was crushed under the beam, mother, father, child and the mom pregnant. There were no other cars for miles around. There was only a split second of time that it could have fallen, they could have been there, in which it could all occur. If they had gone one mile per hour faster here, one slower there... makes you think. Makes you consider the timing of it. How could it not? Is luck god? Maybe.

The job that I received, well the person that had been hired for it quit at the last minute, and I was there, just flown in, ready and hoping that I would be cared for by the universe again, my mother who I will never surpass or know fully. Its all in the letting go, the asking. Someday I will be able to describe the how of it. I have been taking notes for many years. Some day my words may be able to speak it... no. It is not something that language is put to, this grace-filled motion of time and space.

Its a crazy time friends, that we are moving through together. It is a time that smacks of prophesy and new knowledge, of ultimate hate and compassion, but doesn't every time? Yes. But this is the one that we are living in, so it makes a difference to me. Too much perspective takes the fun out of this game. And a game it is, don't be fooled. A complicated game and we are not told all the rules, but are bound to struggle through and all... lose? Win? Depends on how you define death I suppose. I try not to define it, just to keep the pressure on.

2004-05-14T10:13:00.000-06:00

I had real dreams last night, ones that were rich and color and told a few truths.
If felt so good, like warm chocolate on the back of my hand,
or strawberries with triple sec.

And when I woke it was light, gorgeous sun streaming into the world.
Funny, that I am so moon touched, and so sun grateful.
Its a dichotomy I choose to ignore in me.

I am abandoning this town today,
in favor of a plane ticket and some change,
but I'll be back, return with a little flush in my cheeks I hope.

Along with this town I plan to abandon any baggage which has chosen to
cling in these last few months
thinking in particular about a long train of thought missing some cars

Not much of a post, but that's it for now I suppose. Peace and well rested heavy eyelids.

2004-05-13T12:16:00.000-06:00

and now there is that strange sense of nothing, void, empty, and filling. Now comes that quiet space where I stretch, and nap, and clean, and take a hot bath, and make a few calls, and shower, and get ready for more quiet. During this time to come I think about what has been, how to process and refit my reality. I read books that need to be ordered from far away, and I read books that are sticky with ink and pages that cling together like lost children, frightened to be absorbed into my mind. And I plan to do all these things with a meditative glee, a joy of nothing and no one and its the first time its happened in a bit. there is the space where I am sad, slightly frightened of the looming summer, the time to fill. But I feel ready, because this year I found my self drawn to books I wouldn't have read before, and ready for looking and seeking. I am going to volunteer- do something that I have not been asked to do by anyone, but that I joyfully undertake for the doing. Sometime soon I am going to go out on a lake, maybe early in the day before others wake, while there is still mist and moist and dew glittering in the new hour, and I will glide silent, like I am in not on, and I will find that mystic past space that I dreampt about not too long ago.

I think that I will really feel my fingers touch my eye lids, and I think that I will really feel my feet absorb the hot off the black street, and I think I will really feel the cotton sweep the back of my calf, and I will really feel the sweat trickle down my stomach on the hottest night that's a crouching orange tabby somewhere in July.

I can tell that I am ready because I watched the water in the gutter for half an hour, watching the tiny rocks and bits of wood and the miniature dip of life. Scale. I was then sitting on a boulder and looking over the edge, and wondering, what makes that not five hundred feet away, and it wasn't my eyes, or gravity, or some arbitrary form of measurement- it was just me. I tried to make it far, and I may have done it, but at that point you don't want to jump down. Today is a deep cool breath pushing out need for more then now, and that is proper, as it should be. I accept this invitation.

2004-05-11T11:53:00.000-06:00

It is possible that I am procrastinating. I know that sounds unlikely, but I really think that it may be true. I am thinking about food, trying to post things, checking my email... generally being overly distractable. What to do, what to do... other then my 20 page paper. It's my last one, the other two are in for better or worse. I know that I will feel much better once it all gets done. Once I can sit back and be at peace with my first semester, a sigh of relief... but I'm hungry, and tired and grumpy. Damn it. I was trying to post a photo to my profile, and failed utterly, but did get a picture of me in Washington up, so I suppose that will have to do. I am so computer illiterate. They never seem to say the things that I want them to in the directions.

I was laying in the sun a little bit ago, just feeling the burning on the thin strip of lower back where my shirt had ridden up. I want to go to a movie, and sleep, and for it to be summer. I think in a way though, and this happens to me every semester, I don't want it to end. I want to be taking a summer course, or having a job, or doing something. It never feels right, having all this stress build up and build up, and then gone. I just want a week, or a month, and then back. Don't send me away from these walls all hot long summer, all moist night cool evening summer. I want to still be thinking and talking- I want to see how long I can push it, pry it, stretch it. I want to see if the heat will turn my mind more malleable, more clay like, and I want to see if you can sculpt it into something it has never been before. Thats it for now. I just hadn't posted in a bit, and thought I ought to. I put up another blog page at www.bloggerresearch.blogspot.com If you are interested in some of my academic writing on blogs, though not very academic as it goes, feel free to check it out. I think that it turned out fairly well, and I had to learn how to link things, which is cool. Deep breaths. Almost there. Okay.

2004-05-11T11:49:00.000-06:00

Morgan on the beach

2004-05-07T08:42:00.000-06:00

I know that I don't do well without sleep. What was I thinking? Once again late into the perfect night I was awake. Maybe I am trying to decenter myself. It is said that people who start studying while they are high get the pattern of that imprinted on their brain, and then they need to be high to study. Possibly I am attempting to decenter myself, undermine my own stability with lack of sleep in order to be in a place that is more familiar with writing. Its just meant too many ciggs, not enough food, and not enough sleep. I have to keep moving though, and my dreams have gotten more lively. I dreampt about a dog god the night before last, and the scroll that showed the way he had to die over and over, and it all took place under the ocean. Last night I dreampt that I was breaking CD's left and right, that there was a party where I went under the surface and swam low to the ground (I tend to swim in the air as opposed to fly in dreams), and then also that I was in this house with another woman, and this man. I was fairly young, and somehow he had control over us both. He was abusive, and in the dream me and the woman together were playing hide and go seek with him, and there was fear in my chest, and I was holding her hand, and I said, "we can just leave now, and he will search, and we can go to the shelter..." and she said alright, and we started to leave but then she stopped and said I should go alone. She said she would catch up, but I knew that she was just stuck here, and I was somehow jealous in the dream, like she was going to get all of his attention- good or bad, and so I stayed, and we tried to hide, and ended up hiding in a box of old toys, and he sat down on top.

I'm trying to wake up a little bit before I attack my paper. Attack, go to war, destroy and such. I just need to breath and work with it, flow, be gentle. I know that all this will work out, and I am not as panicked as my knotted and painful coffee and smoke stomach would imply. Just sleepy. Just ready to lay down and call it good. But I'm awake, and ready to go, yes? We'll make it through the next five days with flying colors. Make the grade. Be a champion. Deep breath, go stretch, go and take some vitamins (which is bound to help somehow) and keep moving- above all else, keep moving.

2004-05-06T20:52:00.000-06:00

The night just got warmer last night, never cooled down, became a dance and challenge. I like those nights. For me it marked summer. It marked the beginning of wonder. I cant wait to go exploring...

2004-05-05T19:28:00.000-06:00

So a few beers later... oh, right. I forgot the beginning of that. I'm still a few beers in... so I suppose that works. Worked all fuckin day today in the lab. All day. I set up camp, and felt a little guilty about that, but what the hell? Its a grad lab, right? I'm a grad student, right? I have three papers due in the next six days, right? I can set up camp. So I set up camp, and played, wrote, and didn't write, and traded music, and got some food, and had conversation, and that is what the fuck life is about. Fuck this thinking shit. Its just that. We need to breath, right? Not worry about the next second and just be where we are, yes? So a few beers later, I'm still in that place, but waffling on the quality of work that will emerge in my floating while sitting state. High. Why is that? Do we never get low? Do we never move down into the earth and find something more there? Why do humans hold this secret need to get away, to move up, to move further from the moment and more into it? In the darkness are we not also away? In the hollow ground are we not also in the space, the second that is? And what now? What now that I am floating and spinning and moving within and without? Where do I go when I am traveling in all directions? I am thinking in every space, and sitting in every chair, and on the floor and the moon. I am craving drugs and sex and that second that is not anywhere but where I am, and I am getting it at every moment of the day of late. Playing it by ear, wondering where the next wandering will take me, and knowing that it will be into the moment. Nothing else, no one else. We sometimes glimpse that we are not the main character, and sometimes you say thank fuckin god that it is not about me, but in your heart, you know it is. That other peoples words are just a tiny portion of the story, and the whole thing is about you. So if I am writing from my point of view, and the whole story, the whole reason for being is to play a bit part in someone else's life, that the story is really about this other person? That's bullshit. I'm making a story, and my story is interwoven, and we are all making our own stories because there is nothing else to do really. There is no where else to go with it but keep playing our part and hope someone, somewhere, might think that it is a story that is worth while. That's all. Its all that we can do. And those moments, those moments of maybe, and no, and sometimes, and possibly and above all, YES, those are the moments that make the tale, that construct the essence, that is. And yes, there is a meta narrative, and yes, we are all bit actors in that one, and yes, my story counts too, and yes, your story is just as important and just as valid, and that doesn't lessen any story. We are not moving away from truth, we are making it, and we are drowning in it, and we cant see the ocean for all the fucking water. That's the thing. And thinking has left me, and drowning is becoming me, and the words that I read in that poem written a few hundred years ago are still truth to me, and no, I am not the evil in all the world, and yes, I am, because I can be both, all things, the ultimate grey, and that's okay for me. Does what I say confuse you? Does this speedy rant baffle you? Then you are not my audience. My audience are the ones that can listen and know that god and the devil, they came from the same seed, the same moment. And my audience are the ones who can recognize that maybe, just maybe, birth and death are the same fucking thing, all wrapped up in one convoluted package. Because you know what? We are born to die. We are born to die a thousand hideous deaths and not one of them is without a rebirth- not unless you let it be. Not unless you lay down and choose to shut your eyes, and I wont buy it, and that is because the other day I was thinking about candles, and I was thinking about the energy in them. You see, a flame is, your flame, my flame, all the flames that meet and part and steal and kill and give heart and heat and light and I was thinking, I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is something that happens when that flame goes out. That lighter, that candle, that moment, and it is forced to be something more, because once the energy is in motion, well, it just cant cease to be. Not until it is spend, its birth power changed into a hundred other things, not until it is gone in to the creation that is, the original birth light. This is how we know that there is a god, that we will not name as such, even though the naming is in us, and because it is so much larger then us- because the birth, the moment when all that potencial energy is centered in one space- space long enough to give life to a grub or a baby or a planet- because that comes together, and is given- then we know. And what if that is pure luck, one second that the story is, so what? Because we are moving in a universal dance that we will never really know. Because we are moving in a sublte motion, one that makes us weep and quiver, because we cant separate it, but we can watch and listen and learn how to walk in tune with it. We can learn how to ask and we will not be forgotten, because, frankly, and this will sound a little harsh but that's not the point, we were never remembered. We are adrift and always tethered and there is nothing we can do but live an ordinary life in an out of ordinary way. There is little to do but try to make our thread dance and stand out, tying and looping its way through a thousand others, making knots that the weaver wanted us to be in. Be. And we can do nothing but know that the spark of this body is what is keeping us tethered here, and that the things that we give gifts of life to, anger or love, punishment and hate, freedom and joy, well those are the things that we are supporting. Those are the things that we are burning our life energy, our moment of clarity, our second of truth in this time and space on. Choose wisely. Choose like your life depended on it, and don't be stingy because you are receiving as you give, not equal, but you cant know, and so live it up. Live. And when you get tired and start moving past this body, but not past the everything else that is, well know that you were giving to things that you loved. I loved them with my body and soul and thought and moment and I caressed them and licked them and beat them and was consumed by them, and that consumption felt so damn good, better then anything I ever felt before, because it was something that I chose. That choice is the only other thing we get, and all springs from that, and the energy we put out, its gone, and it comes in other forms, but that original imprinted lovely self, that false sense of the individual, well that is gone. Its getting dark, and I'm clenching my teeth from the effort of telling you some truth that you may not see, and that you may not read as truth, but that I know to be a part of the whole, a portion that I have worked a thousand times for and considered a thousand more without moving from the same chair. Frankly, it will all be gone, tapped, whipped, smacked and thirsty in the morning- but I am emerging and I continue and you wonder where it will stop, and its my choice when it does, and I am just too tempted to go all the way, to turn this into everything, and everything into nothing, and I will have power, and ultimate weakness to that power. And I will let everything pass and touch all and nothing in a fluid motion that may be god, and then I will know that I have reached the stopping point. Not till then, friend, not till it is over and done and my energy has touched and moved and been driven to the point of nothing will I fall into the whole, and until then, I will drink this wine and fuck this moment for all I am worth.

2004-05-04T15:37:00.000-06:00

Here's the secret; when we ask, we receive. When we approach this life with wonder, we are constantly amused and surprised. When we think about the way things work, the flow of everything, we are able to see the gifts that wash up on shore.

I have seen the dawn for the second time in as many months. Maybe I need to begin staying awake for it more often as the light that comes then is clear and about birth. There is an awakening in that moment, despite the exhaustion that you feel, despite the long walk through chill night air, in that moment of warmth we are able to have. Have what? Have the moment, and it becomes everything that we need. When our mind is cleared of the chaos and turning of too many street lights, when we forget the smell of herbal brews and honey, when everything is lost it is not a loss at all- it is a becoming of now.

Is it that I look for proof of god, or is that god is always offering up proof? Is it that I am walking the right path, or does the right path move under my feet? When there is a kiss, is it the lips giving, the neck receiving? Or is the neck giving, and the lips receiving? Do these questions matter? No. They don't, because they can be contradictions, and they can both be true. Why do we insist on these binaries which pull us away from simple seeing? The path is moving and I am walking. The proof is offered, and yes, I am looking.

After nights of wandering sans thought, after nights that are too filled with thought to be considered thoughtful, after nights of tight tension pulling on chest and groin, then I am empty, and free to start again in this clean sight. It is a sight washed free of dirt- and these times come back when we are most ready to receive them, otherwise they are simply confusion, simply sleeplessness, simply tired. When we welcome these nights, they give us new eyes. When was the last time that you had such a night, and even with the weight of heavy things undone sitting on your shoulders everything stood out? When was the last time you danced the fine line of dawn, giving in once you were sure that a new day and life was going to come back, crashing down, sitting down around you with unfriendly looks that made you laugh in a half quiet mad way?

You floated in those moments of stolen sleep.

You moved through the day with a slight ache in your muscles, recalling.

You wondered at gifts, even as they fade and drift away, and are utterly content with this- because it was, and you were there fully, holding it without fear of future and past.

You had no chance to make it permanent- there were too few moments in which to dream, and nothing in your mind could settle, and thus it becomes a continuous dream, and constant moment, which floats and returns in a third eye gasp of recognition of the divine entering into everyday moments to tweak them to perfection.

There is nothing to think about, nothing to process, nothing to consider, because you entered this space with nothing wanting, nothing lacking, because you had gone through the rituals you needed, traveled through the dark spaces, talked to all the demons and dined with all the wraiths, you had cleaned out all the forgotten trash, washed your hands in lemon rose water, sat down in silk and considered the meaning of impermanence, you had talked about the way water forms eddies, and how that is bigger and prettier then just a rock under the glazed liquid, you had been cut and had pink lines running along your skin in all the sacred symbols that you didn't even knew you knew when you began, and you remembered how to breath in light without hesitation, and then you stepped over the marker that creates a gap between consciousness and death, and then you were ready to begin.

2004-05-02T18:38:00.000-06:00

I feel so shot. I'm currently taking a break from writing... by writing... but this is free form. This is easy- this is a little bit of everything. I went out for a break earlier. There is a courtyard in eddy, which is filled with grass and trees and plants. I had noticed on my way into eddy that there was a subtle buzzing noise in the courtyard, and when I went out I found the source. I laid under a tree with falling pink buds and a hundred bees zipping around it. The hum was comforting, and I watched the petals fall onto the stones, coating them in sunrise colored snow. While I was there the sun came out, and illuminated the tops of all the branches, heating the flowers just enough to release a warm smell of honey. No wonder the bees looked so happy. I watched a bird three feet away from me eating mites I couldn't see out of the center of a flower and the edge of the branch. The bird was unaware of me, seemingly unaware, and I watched it breathing shallowly. I let flowers fall on my body, and wondered at the moment. Now I am trapped in a cold, dark lab...

2004-05-02T15:35:00.000-06:00

Shouldn't I be doing something else, like writing a bunch of rough drafts? Its hard to focus here in the library. I want to spread out, organize my notes, warm up my thoughts. Instead its cramped. I am listening to a new CD though- Nellie McKay. She's really cool. Mostly I just want to sit here and listen to her, not write multiple papers in a crunched time frame. I will certainly need to plan better as far as that goes next year. I cant write here. Damn it. I'm just staring at the screen. I wanted to write last night, but I no longer have internet at my house, so I cleaned my room last night instead. Maybe I will go over to eddy... Its bound to by quiet, if the labs even open...

2004-05-01T17:34:00.000-06:00

I just did a workshop that was sponsored by the campus women's alliance on sexuality. It was remarkable. I think that we forget what sensuality, sexiness, movement, play, power and altered senses can do to us as far as the erotic. I think that we forget touch, and how damn powerful it is- and that the erotic is not sex. That touch and breath and awareness can simply lead to greater understanding- another layer of connection that words don't offer- picture worth a thousand type thing. The workshop was really about body language, being able to see and understand these sublte movements. There was an exercise where we got a partner, shut our eyes, and slowly touched their hands, arms, shoulders, neck, head, face, and then back down. The class was entirely women, except one man, who asked me if I would be his partner. With eyes shut I found a different memory of touch and breath, became so aware of what was happening in each fiber of myself- what I was projecting, what I was wanting, what was being asked for. No words, no sight- just an intimate exchange in ten minutes. After each partner had been pet, in the gentlest way, with eyes still shut we were drawn away from our partners. We then had to find them, eyes shut, by touch. There were hands, that I touched and was touched by, and I knew instantly that they were not the person I was looking for. It was like un-entangling a web of closeness- each person looking, knowing that you are not right, that they are not right, and then moving on with out anger or judging. When we talked about it afterward everyone had similar experiences, moments, a deep exchange of something that was not fluids or words- what had been exchanged was more potent and more open. You felt loss without that person, and you looked for them with hope. Before we were separated, when I knew it was coming, I was distracted by the loss of it, the loss that was coming. Imagine- the tangible feeling, that resonated so deeply, after just ten minutes of this interaction. We will all know them, their scent, feel, breath- after just minutes this happened. It was human. Another game we did, it was a game created for me. It was a sport, and play, and amazingly what I am. I'll save it for another writing, or maybe it is just a game that I will play with you if you ask.

2004-04-30T13:45:00.000-06:00

When I got home after the Take Back the Night march last night I was cold. I had walked and stood in the rain for about an hour, and was pleased when I smelled a fire walking up to the door of my house. My roommate had a roaring fire going, and all the lights out. I peeled out of my wet boots and socks, I stripped off my coat and hat, and laid there in the blazing heat that came out in a steady red light. At one point I called a friend and had to abandon the fire for a while, but while I talked to him I found my guitar. After the hour of chatting I went back down to the living room, still dark, still warm, and curled up in the chair that was abandoned in the quest for ice cream. A good quest, noble. I was all for it, as long as I got to sit in the chair, in the semi dark, and pick sound from strings. One roommate gone for ice cream, the other gone to bed, there was quiet that I filled with old songs and random bursts of music. He returned from his quest, doubly triumphant with both sorbet and ice cream (vanilla, clearly the best of the choices) and we ate, and then he retired. I sang to myself songs that are steeped in memory. They are Beetles songs that my father would sing us as he played on his guitar. Once there was a way to get back homeward... once there was a way to get back home... sleep pretty darling do not cry, and I will sing you a lullaby...

When a book is truly good, you will return to it year after year and find that you have a deeper understanding of the meaning, that it is resonating in a way that is new to your experience, but just as true. Occationally, this happens with words or sentences. Things that had previously had only one meaning become deeper, truer, and they have more flesh on their small symbols. So it was for going homeward. Suddenly, as I quietly sang, I felt melancholy echo in me. I felt a space widen into a silent night, where home is far away, and right with you. I stepped into a different place with the meaning- the soul of a word that will bite into you and never let go. It sat heavy in me, but was comforting as well. Memories and ghosts silently walked by, respectful of the dark fire light, and gave me another layer of thought to contemplate. If you have felt this resounding with a word, you know what I mean. The first time when you understood that love was encompassing of pain? That love was truly and deeply not the opposite of hate, but was a different alchemy of it all. Finally I spoke to the darkness, quiet, urgent, recognizing it for what it was- mirror, metaphor, self, and god.

Today I have walked in the rain, and snow, and talked about coincidence, and found a new space to hide and watch the world. There was good conversation, a flow from earlier revelations leading, once again, to the confirmation of intuition. thank you. I said it last night to the dark, and I say it again, on this public private place of knowledge, to the chaotic gods of woven order, and to those who share the ride. Thank you.

2004-04-29T10:03:00.000-06:00

Good morning cold wet dreary depressing world.
You are slushing and moist and cold and much more conducive to spending a day indoors working then some other days I could name this week.
I suppose for that, thank you.
I suppose that you are watering the soil, making up for those long sunny bitter febuary days where the dry cold whips us in a frenzy and leaves nothing to show for it but wind chapped cheeks and sun burned nose.
It all evens out in the end.
My mom used to say that to us all the time, "It all evens out in the end." When I am among friends that I love, I will buy them food and presents, knowing that I am putting forth something that will come back. When I am down and have been hurt, I believe that I do not need to "blacken" my karmic record by taking action- as action in a divine way will be taken.
But I also believe that we should take notice of injustice, and stand up for others- who will stand up for us if we don't? It all evens out in the end.
Quite frankly, we die. We, all of us, everything, will move into a space of nothing or everything (are they the same?) and once there...?
You see, if I believe that this conception of a soul is made of words and social control, then where do I go?
What happens to me, the me that I feel reverberating within my chest?
What happens to the me that whispers answers to questions I didn't even know I was asking?
There are places that I believe in that are beyond the power of the brain, beyond powers of speech, and beyond knowledge that can be expressed any where but in dreams.
I had them again last night, and I woke up at 730, and thought about them, and then how I would just shut my eyes till 8, and then it was 9 and there were dreams every where and I couldn't reach them. Having watched the patterns of my dreaming for ten years I have a good sense of how and why they are doing this. When I get stressed out they retreat-
but rarely are they so vivid and waiting- they are waiting for me to just sleep until I am forced awake by them, not by some sense of obligation to the world.
It is well past time for starting to do in the day.
Way past time for a lot of things really, but that is neither here nor there.
I feel ready to pounce on the world today.
Do you think that she's wise to it?

2004-04-28T22:31:00.000-06:00

If you do not want to read about my blogging research, which I can only assume some of you don't, feel free to go to the very last paragraph... though you will be missing out on a very important part of my life right now, and will likely never feel the same connection to me that you don't know about my work in this area... but if you have to I understand...sigh

So what is all this "push button publishing for the people" all about, eh? This rant is to:

A: Organize my thoughts
B: To follow our assignment (write on research)
C: Just to write

Creating diaries is an old hobby. According to one of my sources (and I had library women looking, there aren't a ton oddly enough) the habit of writing about yourself and the banality of your day has been going on for hundreds of years. This is an old genre. Diary comes from the Latin diarium or "daily allowance" and journal comes from the latin diurnus or "journey". Originally most dairies were ledgers, hence daily allowance. While western society has only been doing diaries for so long, with Pepys being the first popular diary author (200ish years ago), Oriental cultures have been doing it much longer with the Pillow Books of the Japanese courts. Journaling is a rather recent phenomenon, being created as a genre for women to write and process their feelings. In the 1960s Tristine Rainer wrote The New Diary all about it. Its gotten better and better, and now everyone has one. Maybe not everyone, but it is a socially accepted way of processing emotions and understanding your "true self". (all found at wikipedia.org/wiki/diaries, a very cool encyclopedia that is free online and was most useful in my research... Reliable?) I personally have been journaling for a solid ten years, and find it very useful. Journaling for me provides an outlet, a sounding board, a place to process and a possible chance that someone someday will find my words and listen...

Weblogs are a much more recent event in our history, only being about six years old- though some geeks (in the loving sense of the term) would argue that as long as there has been internet there has been people posting about their inane lives. Truly that is splitting hairs, because the meat of it came when people started to take notice in a mass way- and boy did they. In an April 4th article on blogging in the Guardian the author did a google search on 'blog' and got 29,7000,000 hits. I did it just now and 33,600,000 hits. In other words, the world of blogs is increasing a an amazing rate. Now, its true that many of those blogs are now defunct- when many people get board of a blog they simply move on, leaving an open link that is not getting updated (like some of the ones in our class that I have tried to visit and still have first memories as the only entry)- but even given that, its a hell-of-a-lot of online journals.

There are a wide variety of blogs on the internet. One of the reasons that journalism is interested in blogs is that many of the political sites have put pressure on main stream media to give more coverage to important events. This was the case when Trent Lott made his classic racist remarks- Joshua Marshall, who runs talkingpointsmemo.com, is said to be responsible for forcing the media to sit up and take notice (from Wired, Dec 23 2002). Other people use blogs as art, blogs as rants, blogs as cute displays for their pets- the list goes on and on, as we have often witnessed in class. People still use online journals in much the same way that they used private, pen and paper, old-school journals, however, the movement from a text based forum, and a widely regarded private forum, to an electronic and public forum, has done some strange things to the diary/journaling genre.

In the 2003 three article "Teaching an Old Genre New Tricks: the Diary of the Internet," published in Biography, Laurie Mcneill did an excellent job of laying out some of these shifts. Laurie, who is a historian who specializes in the use of diaries, explicated many of the similarities and differences. For example, the online blog borrows heavily in format from the old diary, using dates that move in a chronological way, and being made in entries. the blog is still talking about peoples lives for the most part, and what is important to them. She points out that blogging and diaries are both viewed as a narcissistic waste of time by some people. Both a journal and a blog seem to create a reader and writer pact, in which the reader is able to act as a conduit for the confessions of the writer, and the reader trusts the author to be presenting some form of an authentic self, but more on this aspect later.

There are also some differences, and some shifts that are key to note. A blog has the ability to create communities, through linking between blogs and interactive texts (comments, email, and favorites links). A blog is fluid- it can be changed at the will of the author without any trace of a change having been made. These next two points are really important, so read carefully. A blog acts as a blur between reality and virtual reality. Finally, a blog, or the space of the internet itself, acts as a private/public space which can let a person either take on a persona, or take off a persona at their whim (I call this the Superman effect, but that too will have to wait till later on in the text).

So, I read this article, and some of the articles she read to create this article, and several other articles that were less impressive but offered a few good points, and thought, "now what?" Well, I wanted to write a techno-ethnography, yes? So, now that I have some idea of what people are saying about this genre of blog, does it apply to my own writing? Is all of this connected to my experience as a blogger out in the ethernet trying to be heard? I think so, and I think that I have something to add on top of it. the oddest thing about my reading was that none of the authors that I picked up happened to be bloggers themselves, or if they were, they chose to omit the fact. that means that I am an insider, and that I can explain, compare and contrast, some of the motivations that I have cycled through to get to this state (what that state is, I cannot say yet, hence the 'this').

Okay, now I am at an impasse- its 12pm, and I could be going to sleep, but I am oddly perky and not tired. However, there are several reasons to stop writing. The first is that this entry is already too long- and I do think about my audience, and I do want this to be read (two things that are important to us narcissistic bloggers). Second, If I get into the part where I am looking at my own work it could be a long entry, and I am already feeling like I have met the goals set out so kindly at the top of this entry: I do feel more organized, like I have a solid base that I can work from in my own piece, that I have written about my research, and that I have written. There we go. So here is the candy for those who skipped the long stuff above, though I did try to make the above writing palatable:

Nothing exciting has happened to me today, truth be told. All that stuff that you either just skipped or read- that's pretty much the whole of it. I woke up, I read a few chapters about Rasputin, I did some online research on blogs and role playing, I went to the library and did more, I went and printed stuff, I came home and did reading, and then came here and posted. At one point I went to get some food too. That really is it. Let me think about something fantastically daring to tell you... something revealing and worth the wait... I'm a Gemini?... no, that's no good... that I like to do yoga?.... boring... that I used to have a cat that would sit on the sill above the stairs and reach down a paw and scratch you as you came up?.... no....that I'm really a forty two year old man that is thinking about a sex change and is trying on the personality, that is really inside of me, of a slightly jaded, but overall happy, 22 year old graduate student?... doesnt ring true... how about this: when I am thinking about something really hard, or am distracted by doing some detailed physical work, like beading or weaving or what not, I will stick out my tongue ever so slightly, and then become conscious of it and pull it in, and about thirty seconds later it will all repeat itself. Thats it- the best I could do today, still, don't we all feel better with a little self disclosure? I wonder if that was sarcastic... I really can't tell.... something to think on... as well as my use of the thought pause dots... over used here a little I think... now its just automatic though...there is also an error in this text (or several, but if you read often you're likely used to it) that I cant find, so forgive me and fill in the right word for me, k?... sleep well...

2004-04-28T08:18:00.000-06:00

Its early. The world is pale. Every time I breath, move, sigh, my muscles seem to cat stretch under the skin. My dreams have been achingly bright. When I heard that some people dream in black and white, I was slightly confused- color is vivid in my dreams. At times it is more impressive then story, plot, or characters in the matted dream conversation. The last few days I've woken up tired, but refreshed. Contradiction? Its not that I don't want to get up, I feel like I've slept, I feel that there has been rest, and I know there have been dreams (they are circling in my head, like fish beneath the surface of a dark pond) but I am also drained- I've been walking all night on tired dream feet. I've been circling the world in my sleep, the stories, though I cant recall them exactly, have been repetitive, and fun, and stressful.

I was in the lab last night late, later then my posting time would imply. I was trying to post, but it was too late at night to be at school and not to be in some romantic corner of the library drinking coffee and looking like a classic grad student, so I pressed publish on the strangeness and rode home. Today is a work day. I've said that before, but today cannot afford not to be a work day. Today, I am going to write something for my classes, even if it sucks. Even if I would never ever ever think about turning it in, I am going to get something into my sick little computer (it has a virus, and I am praying that it holds out just a little longer... like till Friday... so that I can take it somewhere. When I try to open the media player, msn comes up twice. It has also been turning itself on, which is a little freaky and I don't know if the computer store people will believe me on that one...). There are two vases of fresh flowers on my desk, and it was warm enough last night to fight with my covers, open my window, and shower before bed just to evaporate into the night air. I rode home in just a loose button up shirt (with pants too... we should mention that) last night (and just recalled part of my dream which involved a friend smoking something that wasn't weed... some kind of herbal high, but it was harsh and she looked very uncomfortable with the results) and was perfectly warm and cool. Applied to jobs yesterday, thought about papers, thought about people, thought about next year.

When I feel like I'm getting my footing, when I feel secure in where I am, I think about my own spine. I have a tattoo there, it travels down my back directly over my spine, and starts with a black circle filled in, then there are moons progressively changing to full - and full moon in the middle of my back- and then progressing the rest of the way of my tail bone into new again. 13 circles down my spine. Their permanence reminds me of the cyclical nature of the world, and the change that has to come during a life cycle. We start, we live, we die- it seems without fail. I have no doubt that there are people who can tease death for a while, but it waits, and is skilled at hunting. This passage seems to have little in common with the rest of this rant... I hope you don't mind. It still feels early, there is sleep stinging my eyes...

2004-04-27T22:13:00.000-06:00

I just got done with the zine project presentations. God, kids are so very cool. I recall every time I get to see them in action, being creative, being. I cant write here. My mind is a blank. It feels a little zen. Like being a chalk board that's wiped clean with a moist towel. Its taken me about 20 minutes to write these lines, like a stunted poem. Thoughts moving sideways. Flower behind my ear. Blue on black computer before me. Its all quiet, and tired, and ready to be spoken in whispered memories, half moments, half seconds dripping out on to my stomach and its all etching its way in to this time. Time to stop weaving out of air impossible things and generous impossibilities, to get on my ride in the cool night air and slide through night like a woman with wings.

2004-04-26T12:14:00.000-06:00

Its not raining today. Indeed, it seems to have moved into an idyllic spring day, windy, and sunny, bright, and perfect. Good. Its the way it should be.

The universe has a sense of humor, but it is warped and not at all human, thus it difficult to interpret. Often this is because we are the butt of the joke. Its true. I have the story to prove it.

There is a reading journal for one of my classes. One had to write a summary, a response, questions (for each reading) and weekly journal prompts. I had been diligent. Don't let yourself get behind, this is easy, if you do it as it comes. I had been good. Very. It had been collected once, and would be once more. When I got it back after the second collection I buckled down and wrote for a few hours to catch up. I was proud of it, of my focus and preparation.

Then it was gone.

The second half was due last Thursday (could that have something to do with my less then upbeat entries?) and I had not found my journal. It was in a gutter somewhere, I was sure. It was Rotting after some coffee boy had thrown it in the trash while clearing tables. It was smudged and blurred and not coming home. After I rewrote the entries, about 7 single spaced pages, I resigned myself to its goneness. I said, universe, fine, I have rewritten it, as I knew I would have to, but I would be happy if you could give it back to me, just so I can use it in the future...

Saturday evening I got it back. My friend, whose house I hadn't visited for about three weeks, handed it too me as if it was nothing. He just handed it over as if it wasn't a miracle, and a sick joke. He did not realize that he had played a role in the divine's mockery of my stress. He was just perplexed as I stared at the book, then him, then the book, then him. Damn. You have to believe in the personal interaction of god when you see such minutely constructed sceneries. I called it, but I almost wish I hadn't.

Research... yes. Funny that. I think that research is a relative term. Am I doing research right now? Can one be a participant who is observing their own participation? I think that I just realized why academia likes people to be separate from their research subjects- its not because you get better data, its because its damn tough to interpret your own actions. Think of all the things we do all the time that are reflex. To be self conscious all the time would easily be maddening. We breath, we think, we move, we listen to this wonderful song and sing along, and we do not pay much attention really. Odd that. How is it possible? Moving with out knowing? How are we compartmentalized, and why? What is the point to that? I have long thought that humans have limited perception, that we mistake for reality. If we could sense everything, we could do nothing. However, I do think that there are people with more. Cant discount it, not once I know that I can't perceive everything, and that memory and perception are so faulty. Where was I.... Anyway, research is coming in faltering jumps. My other two papers are falling into blended outline, coming together like meaning of a memory. Knowledge is being extracted. This one... is still in its baby thought stage...

Possibly I will post it once it is complete. Maybe it is being written as I go, following the form of a blog. That's an interesting idea...

2004-04-22T22:43:00.000-06:00

So I have begun reading my old blogs. It is a little surreal, and a little frustrating, and I am unsure what it is yielding. I found that I have themes: reality, dreams (at times blending), and flowers. There are things that will come up over and over, forming some sense of a linear narrative, and others that only are said once. I have an audience. My roommate was talking about blogs, and journals, while we stood in the snow. She said that blogging is a way to gain intimacy without risk, a way to ask for immortality, a way to romanticise someone listening to you. I have done this, I have written about it. I have wondered in a morbid way what this typing has meant, if anything, to anyone.

I am writing a paper on this strange thing called blog. I would request (in the name of research) that if you read this blog, leave me a comment. I don't need to know who you are, or any of that. Just tell me how often you have read it, if you've kept up, and a general sense of what you may have gleaned or not from it. Maybe why you read blogs. If you don't want to... whatever.

I cant believe its snowing out.

In fact, don't tell me who you are, because she (my roommate) may be correct. I don't really need to know who you are, may not want to. I have a sense of some of the readers, people who have mentioned it or who have posted in the past... but to a certain extent, I want to write as if you are listening and you is someone who I know and don't know. You are someone who knows something about me, and I might talk to you, and smile at you, and you could be thinking, "I know a few of your passions. I know some of what is in you." Because, honestly, despite the knowledge that I have an audience, I have been honest with what I have given. You do know parts of me, and I don't always know those same parts of you. It is an exposure, and sign of tense giving, revealing my neck in a head tilt. I wonder if it gives you any power over me. I wonder if I have power over those that I have read. This blog thing is a question of performing, and it is a question of wanting, and is it a call for attention, a nod in the authors direction, some kind of narcissism that we allow our selves, thinking we have something to say. We are in a culture where no one really listens that often. No one really asks how we are and means it. No one is really wanting to listen to me talk about reality, about how frightening it is, or how exciting. There is not so much intimacy daily- there is a thin sheet of plastic between ourselves and everyone else. I am afraid to expose everything to everyone. there is rejection, and a small self that is really not all that sure, and there is the ego behind it that would never really fail me, but I don't want to put to the test. So maybe this is an attempt. I wrote the other day that this was a confessional, and I think that it is, but in a different way. this is a confessional not for the sake of getting rid of sin- no, sin is just an excuse to have the moments of safely whispering to another person. It is a moment of openness that is secure as well.

It is a pale replacement though, to real exposure, to real trust. It is a sad fill in for the moments of real connection. I like writing here, I do, but can you hear it ring a little hallow? Even from your side? When you read here, are you looking for something? Are you finding it? Is there something that you want to ask? Something that you want to know, but cant say, so you read this, avoiding the exposure?

My story, my narrative, is larger than this. It is in the middle, and it is wide and deep, and it is not contained here. This narrative is back and forth, I jump in time and twist from thought to thought. You can tell time is passing, there are the flowers that I mention in bud, then bloom, then death, and there are the dates, but I couldn't tell you if it is real time.

In my mind I am begging to be held, and am not finding comfort, and am not finding connection to others. I have been gifted with some connection to the things around me, the moments that step out of the normal flow, but there is a strange lack tonight. I will sleep off my uncomfortable gap, and in the morning have an outlook less shadowed by the sound of rain.

2004-04-21T19:50:00.000-06:00

There are certain days that are useless, and then amazingly frustrating, and then they make you rageful. That was today. I am still in the rage stage, and am unsure about when I will come out of it, or what it will turn into.

2004-04-18T16:49:00.000-06:00

I am elsewhere now. Twice today, maybe more, the world has almost faded out of being, only to reapear at the last minute, making a surprise comeback... but I was hoping for the fade to black. Once you fade to black the lights come up, and there is a stretching groan from the crowd, and you can look around and try to recall who the hell your sitting next to, why they have their arm around the back of your chair. The soda I just opening is making tinny pin pop noises at me. Part of me is so dreadfully annoyed at the end of the semester. I like the middle part better. You are going, and you get in to a routine, and you read and write and it all fucking works and then there is nothing and you have to get it all done in a second and then its all a long heat, slow and burning into you, and things feel like they stop working, the heat jams the engines and you cant think for four fucking months- it is just survival and pounding warmth. At night there is a breath, when you can stand under a different sky and talk out things that feel long ago under safe guarding constellations... but sleeping is hard. It floats above you, never settles in during those sun days. I woke up to a bag caught in a tree this morning, blowing and snapping and crinkling in the wind. Before I opened my eyes, I knew that was what it was, but I looked anyway once my eyes were open.

Just thinking about what this is, where I am, why these little symbols are coming out... Maybe this is a confessional. Maybe I am confessing to you, to the world, releasing something here. Maybe the internet is a confessional, a receptacle, a containment unit for all the thoughts we wanted to say but didn't, all the things we wish we had thought but couldn't, and all the things that get tangled between that wet fishing line of lies that is life. Maybe the internet is a brain, a seething mass that is the left over spuj of all the first world brains that have all the leisure time to think but never do, and all those dying thoughts that are bound to be pushed out by another burger, or some breasts or a shiny new something, flee their homes inside our minds and shove their way into a new reality, an ether that is and make a place there. They shoot things at us, try to wake us, put us to sleep, drown us in wet sticky neon images- they are getting their revenge and trying to save us at the same time. Not too hard to believe, not really, not with all the other things that I have allowed into my world, all the rumors and day dreams, the fantasies and fears. This is darker then it should be, I'm not so much in this kind of place, haven't been for a long time. I think that there is stress digging nails into my kindneys, and I keep wondering when I will be ready to get it all done, how it will all get fucking done, and there are things that I haven't even started, and reading and all this shit. At a certain point you're too full to hear about it anymore, too full to taste it, you are saturated with this new thought and it doesn't taste sweet right now. Maybe in a month or so crystals will form, delicate shapes made of thought, and will get stronger, a base for things to cling to, but right now it is just heavy, too much, and my feet are slick with it, and my tongue swollen with it, my eyes raw dryness with it, my hair matter oil with it, by finger nails brittle chips with it, and I keep thinking "I'll just take a break, go for a walk, watch a movie hang out read a book think about something else check my email fucking blog..." and then its just compounding. I want to crawl onto my roof and crouch in the last of the sun light. Have wanted to be there all day, and all day the bonzi has been in the way, and the spider webs on the window, and the desk. GodDamnIt, can I do nothing? I cant even beat a fucking little tree to get to the roof. Fuck. I doubt this is productive, but maybe it fucking is because I haven't been able to write for shit the entire month, which has never happened before and there is this weird fear that if I don't do everything right then I will never have a chance and I know I can fucking do it. Why did I put off applying to schools for my masters? I was fucking afraid I wouldn't get in. I was frightened that in the real world I was jack shit and maybe I am but this is fucking home turf, I should be able to manage the game but I feel stunned, crippled, nothing to follow, new fucking ground and its not holy. All these commitments, all this energy outward, and it has been, and its worth it, and I don't doubt that I will feel better and yes its only three weeks but really, come on, is there any way that I can do what I want to do, the quality I want to do, in this time? Maybe, but I'm so freaked out that seconds and minutes are going by and I am still doing nothing but tapping on this fucking journal. Someone is reading this and likely thinking, "who the fuck does she think she is, I'm taking time out of my busy schedule to read this stress rant, and she is rambling on about jack shit. Why am I on this site? god, Morgan, shut the fuck up so that I can be done reading this piece of shit post, please." Fine. I'm going to get on that roof today, in the next few minutes if its the last fucking thing I do, and I am going to smoke up there, and try to look like a gargoyle and try to gain back some sense of superiority before I go buy something else and get cable and die old and fat and alone.

2004-04-17T20:41:00.000-06:00

I got a bonzi from my mother. I might have written on it before. It has been looking sad of late. It looks dry and angry, no matter how much I give it water. When I watered it tonight, with both a glass and a spray bottle, I told it to feel like it was just after a rain storm and it was living on a mist covered hill top. I think its feeling a little better, maybe just because I talked to it. There have been lots of experiments with plants that imply that they can become connected to their owner, that when the owner has some traumatic experience, the energy levels of the plant will spike. I just finished a book, and am on two new ones. These new ones are not for school, but aren't fantasy, so I think that I will be able to lay them down and not get addicted. One called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It is a book about grammar, and people that are grammar freaks, and how they freak out and why punctuation is so important. I have a friend I know who will like it when I'm done. I thought it would be a good read before I started teaching. My other book is on Raputin. I love him. As a historical figure, he is excellent. I have been rather entranced with him since I did a report on him in high school. How could you not love this huge, mystical, weird, powerful, peasant, Russian man? He has a thousand stories just in his photos. He seems to float out of this reality slightly- well, really far out now that he is "dead". I say "dead" because there is always hope that he is yet still living. At the very least he has likely been reincarnated and is shocking little girls and boys with his striking predictions right now somewhere. Lovely. I'm just taking a break. Saturday night this week is an exercise in focus, in work. I have finished one paper, I think, though I am sure there is much more editing to do on it. Now I have two more to focus on, and with the struggle this last one was... How I will get through... But then again, it always gets done, one way or another. I went to the thrift store today and got a present for my mom, and saw lots of things that I didn't buy. I also went to the co-op and got some crystal ginger, and mango, and an herb that I had a dream about but didn't know what it did. In the dream an old woman was making me up something to help with internal bleeding, and I had a vague sense of the name of the herb she was giving me. Found it and looked it up. It does help with stomach issues, which I haven't had in this body, but I don't know where stress could be building up. When old witches out of the dream world give you instructions, I think that it is wise to take it. I have been making sleep a priority the last few nights, and dreaming has been flooding back. Good stuff, potent, syrup and butter of the mind. My house makes noises when I am here all alone that make me a little... uncomfortable? I ignore them, and they leave me alone. That's the deal. Still though, when I know that its going to be all night, it gets a little stressful. Just me and the hum of my computer and the things that bump around in my room, in the kitchen, on the stairs, and in the living room. Ok, I've ranted long enough, and I'm hungry... There must be something to eat around my house...

2004-04-13T13:09:00.000-06:00

Sunday I celebrated god's rebirth by going to the natural history museum with a friend. We wandered the park and talked about the meaning of life, and fishing, and family and lilacs. I looked at dioramas and played with space things. I talked to little kids and made a magical cross out of a dried reed, a piece of the Koran, a lilac blossom and a feather. I then planted it in the exposed stones of the city park lake, on the east side. Then we went and talked about altering reality at a coffee shop that was near by. The coffee boy there was very flirty. When I went in and asked for more water for my tea he said, "You can have whatever you want love, the world is your oyster." Really, he said this. I was baffled not only by that but by the easy light that was filtering into the world, and by the little boy, likely about 4 years old, who was fascinated by his discovery of opening and closing gates, and his own reflection in a small puddle. We sat outside, even though it was starting to cool down, and we sat in long silences punctuated by comments about the flow of everything. The tree that loomed above me wore strings of lights with small tin shades, and there was a worn stone lion guarding the door. It was a strange amount of adventure. He and I had not spent overly much time alone until then. I think that it is the sign of true friendship, or at least the movement towards trust and comfort. We did not push the quiet that was there. It just sat. No need to impress, no need to start again faltering. And when the conversation was there, vibrant or languid or violent, it was the in between that sat remembered. in between I observed that child, aware of the huge smile on my face as he found toys of hinges and magic gateways of locks. in beteen I saw there was a condom wrapper that was sliver with blue print floating in the lake where fifty feet away, people were fishing with tangled lines drawn from the water. Later I dreamed about the people that were hauling this matted line out of the lake, and in my dream there was a demon on the other end.

It was rejuvenating and at the same time still, and this was key to the success of the Sunday museum trip. We still have to hit the zoo and the DAM soon. In the mean time we are starting spring all over again, after last weeks angry storms that sat white and freezing wet over everything. We watch the trees again for flowers that haven't frozen and died, and the earth for what the water should be bringing. Small deaths, every second, every day. Whole cycles played out in the afternoon. The work is starting to weigh on me, all the work that is not on paper and needs to get there sooner then I think I'll be ready. I know that its grinding me when I catch myself almost being jealous of my friends that just work and don't have homework. Almost.

2004-04-07T10:31:00.000-06:00

Its getting to that point in the semester where time starts going faster and faster, when you dig your heels into the dirt and claw at door frames to catch that few extra seconds of peace, of time, of space. I like it. It is more comforting to me, more familiar then the same thing day in and out. I would rather have this cycle of stress and speed and go and read and think and write, then the same and same and same. In spring in school it is like the rivers of thought are flooding over- there is a vast fast moving flood of ideas swimming together where before there were neat tributary. All this thought merges, becomes impossible to separate, and then there is your footing- gone. However, when in the early summer these flood waters recede they leave a rich bottom, rich land that grows things, grows and combines ideas into new flowers that have never been seen before in the country of your mind. This doesn't happen at the end of the fall semester- then it is colder and slow, and you are indoors, and its dark, so there is nothing to do but get you stuff done and curl up with a book and sleep... Not so when its all hot and light and ready to go!

2004-04-05T14:35:00.000-06:00

Earlier today I was sitting in the library. I had scouted out an empty computer and had just begun checking my email. The man next to me seemed oddly animated. He was listening to music loudly online, and was reading what I think was a sports article... but I am unsure. Then he began to breath very heavily. I was nervous, and kept my eyes trained on the screen in front of me and focused on email. There was this heavy breathing, and then a kind of wheezing cough that was still breathing, and he began to role back and forth in the chair, getting increasingly loud and moving more and more. Eventually he stood up, mumbling and still breathing hard. Then he sat down, and then stood back up. He was a large man, and I couldn't look directly at him because is energy made me afraid and I was attempting to blur him out of my reality. Up and down, up and down. Part of me wanted to ask, "are you okay? Are you having a seizure?" he looked like he was quacking a bit. But instead, I was just slightly confused and a little intimidated by his oddness. He wasn't fitting with what is, and I knew it, and he likely knew it too. Maybe he even knew that I knew. No one else seemed to be troubled as I dashed my eyes back and forth around the lab. No one was noticing- but maybe they were just being covert about it like me. I sent off the four lines of email I had managed to get off, and then I closed the window and tried to look casual as I found another computer that was blocked from view by a square column. Do these thing happen to everyone?

2004-04-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

Its been so frantic, and the day is so cool. My palms are hot and itching, and my eyes feel heavy. I want to go lay down, feel the warm rest of my bed. I woke up fairly early again today, and the cold wet air from the window sunk down over my shoulders.

I learned a story this week. It has many parts that are all interwoven, and it becomes hard to distinguish this waking dream from a sleeping one. It came while I was lost in thought and sinking in and out of knowledge of my bodies motions. There are two roles in this world- there is the hunter and the prey. In this world all things live in a strange fluid always in these roles. We are both hunter, and prey, and we move between them like they are part of us- they are- we are born of this place. When we enter into one role for any extended amount of time, it is a space that we feel powerful in. We are able to hold an identity up, we are able to know ourselves for what we have momentarily become.

The hunter- the hunter is compassion in us, the forgiving, the death bringer, the complete moment of fire and anger. The hunter consumes to forgive, they take to be alive. Hunters eyes flash as they stalk, they are alive with the knowledge of what their loving will bring. When they eat flesh, the moments of battle and weariness that haunt are taken away. They watch as they are pleaded with by their prey to give them the everything of nothing. They are merciless in their quest to give the gift of destruction. It is beautiful and true. It is pure. It is.

The Prey- are waiting to give of themselves, are waiting to be exposed, are waiting to show their souls at the moment before they are eaten to eternity. The prey are listening to the seconds before they cease to exist and learn all things- they are aware. They are begging, pleading with passionate voices so deftly erotic, so blissfully tainted, that their knowledge come quickly. They are forcing the hunter to promise- promise, hunter, that if I fight, if I give you my last bit of strength, that you will win. They are supplicating themselves to the destruction of everything- they are waiting for the ultimate compassion- layed bare- layed true. To be consumed completely- is there any other peace so profound? To give the gift of that annihilation, is there anything more generous?

And we play both parts. In the interaction of a word, in the gesture of a hand, in the movement of our bodies, our inner thoughts and actions, we are schizophrenically vacillating between these two noble and terrible truths. There is exposure in both- there is open giving in both. We move a million times an hour between these two selves and rarely see. We recognize the distinct but similar blood pulsing in our ears when we slip into one though. We can feel the tremor in our hearts when we move into one space or another, and we begin to slip out of language. Why are love and hate the culmination of humanness? Is it possibly because in those two things we find our roles defined? When we hunt the lover, seek out to give of ourselves in a union that will destroy us? When we give our selves over to the hunter of our anger- when becoming completely that which is destruction- allow our hearts to move without our consent, do we not become more? When we stopped knowing the tearing of wet flesh from bone, when we stopped knowing the truth of being eaten, then we needed language to define us. Before that there just was, a cycle that was unnamed, and it was the utter truth of the world.

In my waking dream I saw the dance of human nature. I saw the slight turn of seven veils that shows that we are not always what we seem. The lover pleading for an end to their lust can be the hunter, and the suitor can be the one waiting to be eaten. I saw in my dream the openness of being exposed- naked to another human- exposed with nothing but your shell protecting you from everything- and that shell is cracking- and there is faith there- because there is nothing else to have.

There are other ways, but they are hard to find, and a deeper piece is needed to stop play acting beast and beauty for a while. If you have not felt the sensual insistent need of these, or if you have not recognized what they are- you are not trying hard enough. Black and white are idle metaphors, but this split is a dire adoration creating the moments of power in the cycle...

2004-03-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

Mate is starting to settle into my system and I am getting a pleasant painful buzz. There is something sweet about tea in the morning, when you are killing time, which I don't have much of at this point. Last night the sun was setting and there was a tree in full bloom that it lit. The tree had white blossoms covering it, and in the evening sunset they looked like perfect cream. The moon hung above the tree four fingers up, and I gazed at it while so many just walked by, and they were in the dream, and I felt real. Where have I been these last few weeks? Will the newness of everyday ever get boring again? I hope not. It is like finding red wax in your bed, just a drop, and it is like feeling the shivering of life. I have had many moments of waiting, and they have felt full. Did they ever feel that way before? Moments, seconds that strech out in my mind like a thousand moon rises, moments that are cool and perfect like salt air. The strangeness is starting to settle as a beauty, even the ugly is looking quietly true. I went to a place that was familiar in my sleep last night. I feel like I have been wandering in the same dirty slightly abandoned evening corner of a city for a while now... Where will it lead?

2004-03-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, call for help.

I am trapped inside a metal box, and the six sides seem to be pressing closer, though it may be a trick of the last candle. There were four, but I am down to half now. I am measuring time by the light of this melted wax god, and I am gathering the body that is wasted and keeping it warm against my palms, prayer you might say. Once I have decided that it is still pliable I make it into tiny animals, goats and dogs and sometimes children. The gift of the wax god is the ability to allow us to think that we may be gods, that we can form other beings in our mind, to let us think that we have more power then we do.

There is one outlet here, and one phone cord. I emailed the police, but I got back a neutral response:

Thank you for emailing ----------- county police department. Due to the number of emails we receive we are unable to get back to you right now. We will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Then followed several numbers. I tried using my computer to call, but I'm just not that good. I have no speakers you see. Is it really day out?

No, I am sure now that the walls are getting closer. I can feel their breath now, where as before it was a cool stir of air. Now it is warm on my arms and ears. Now it is hot on the top of my thigh. Now I can hear a cold heat beat from somewhere. Wait, that fast painful sound may be my own heart. There are beads of sweat on my arms and legs. I didn't notice till now, but all my clothes seem to be gone. I can possibly make porn (if I had a camera on this damn computer) but I couldn't save my life. Snuff porn then. I never knew why they were beads of sweat till now. I don't think that my pours had ever oozed paralyzed before, made tiny rocks of cold that roll rather then run down your flesh. There is salt in my eye brows. Who shaved my head? I am beginning to panic. Stay calm. Stay calm.

The candle is on its last legs, and I have a sneaking suspicion that once the candle is gone, the power to remember the outside world will be too. I have to write on my lap with the candle wax running onto the floor and burning my ass now. The walls have closed in so that I cant flex my legs, or stand, or feel. There is only a centimeter from my head to the steal. I wish there was water. I am sucking on a few of my wax creatures to keep my mouth wet, not that it matters. They were sacrifices to me, to my will. Thank you god of light for letting me believe in the smallness of reality- only to the light- only to the edge of the dark.

the candle is flickering, and I can only assume that no one has gotten my messages. The many I sent. Maybe they are reading my mail. I just want to say, before it is dark forever and me and my creations are crushed into the wiring of my computer, I just want to s

2004-03-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

Quick note, and then I have to get back to work: I had a dream last night that there was a white fox that had been caught attempting to trick some goddess and so he had been trapped on a mobius (sp?) loop style path with an extra loop in the middle, like three stacked loops. I fed him bugs. What does a trickster spirit visiting in your dreams mean? I can only guess, but all the options make me smile...

2004-03-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

I had dreams about being cold last night. I was part of some sort of team and we were in Seattle. I was wearing some sort of strappy dress and one of the men in the group put his hand down the back of it, it finally coming to rest both between my shoulder blades and my left hip. He mentioned that all the women were cold because we did not dress for the weather. I went to change into something warm. There were also a new kind of bike in my dream. In the dream I did not know why they had not invented them earlier, and I was buying white hightop biking shoes. Also in my dream there was a test of love where you were suppose to stick your hand in a bucket that was filled with ice and razor blades. I declined. Ahhhh, the glory of sleep. When I woke up my window was leaking in frigid air, and my shoulders were cool to the touch. I let myself slowly emerge from where ever I had been in the night, and the morning has progressed in a sleepy but speedy haze. I spent some time at the hospital emergency room last night with a friend. Everything is fine, but the experience it self was unnatural. We sat in a room separated by thin blue sheets on hooks. Next to us to one side was a minor who was in there to be detoxed. The other side I paid little attention to. The only thing that I had to read was Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor. If you want a truly painful hospital experience, read Palahniuk out loud in the emergency room. Painful, but somehow lighter then it otherwise could have been. I am reading in a quiet but urgent voice, since that is what the text demands, about a faux suicide hotline. The people call up the main character and he tells them, "go ahead, no there is nothing to live for." It was morbid and ridiculous. I read quieter and thought the whole thing terribly funny. Maybe I'm sick, but it was really very poetic. There is a shining evening out, glowing but chill. I have gotten little done today, other then cook with my sister. There are assignments hanging over my head. Tomorrow will have to be productive. The roses that I received are dying, pink petals curling into condensed bruised flush. The temporal nature of things is sometimes shocking to me. It was suggested the other night that sometimes true and utter stillness is the key to understanding. I had an exaggerated fear of that stillness, thinking that the idea even could make me stagnate. Why the harsh reaction? Possibly I am afraid of stillness, change being something that I have just learned to embrace? Possibly it is the time spent still, waiting for movement, and what if that movement never came? It always does though. Look into nature and you can see that true stillness is impossible. There is a chance that the whole is truly still, that in the movement that we perceive in the changing of seasons and fall of snow, there is truly one pattern that is fixed. I don't think that I'm ready to see that pattern, there is much walking to be done first. My mother gave me a bonzi as a gift. I am entranced by it, but at the same time am loath to control it. I don't want to examine it and make the choice that this branch is too long, this one is too short, there is no perfection. What is nature if not wild? Why try to place false constraints. It seems to be an exercise in making yourself small, tight, with out passion, critical. I'll tend it and let it grow, see where this tiny thing decides to take me.
It seems that I am still avoiding our assingment, the one about politics. Hurumph. One more thing to do I need not, so I might as well take a shot while I am already typing, yeah? I have played with many political affiliations, and decided on none. I don't like the idea of black and white. It doesn't fit, and so I ignore it. Polarizing yourself makes it impossible to take into account the complexity of any problem. So I have been entertained by anarchy recently, but am not well enough versed in it to call it truth. The ideas are intriguing, but are not embraceable as of yet. Socialism is also entertaining, though for more practical reasons. I would certainly not associate with either the democratic party or the republican party. I like some aspects of different political theories, like feminism, and Marxism, and environmentalism. I have ideas, and am comfortable with that. I don't really like money, but that's easier to say when I have it then when I don't. I am very very uncomfortable with big business, or corporations, or transnational corporations. Scarey things lead that way. Not sure, always trying to be flexible, ready for most conversations, if the others participating are willing to let ideas be just that. If people are willing to talk about and act on things that they have really talked about... well, then we can see.
Two young girls just walked by on the street. One had flaming red hair, and was tall and was wearing black. The other had dark hair and was wearing red. They looked like the queen of spades and the queen of hearts waiting to become playable.

2004-03-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

It is late at night, or early in the morning. Time is slipping by something fierce. There are roses in this room, and books on the floor. There are angle cards in Spanish sitting and waiting to tell the future. There is a chess set made of stained glass, and there is me, tired and listening to the sound of my computer fan. Why am I writing here? I am so much more aware of it then I was before. There is a dream of chaotic sex and violence waiting for me behind my eye lids, there is a moment of utter calm in the face of unknowable dark flashes of thought. There is a place that my mind will curve in, like I am making the final lap, and then I will be gone. There is a place waiting in the quiet of my bed, naked and warm, flannel and cotton laying me in a cocoon of possibly friendship, and it is waiting to hear my under thoughts. The ones that are making their way into the cave of my memory, lost cats wandering the hallways of my palace of mind. What I want, I long for, right now in this place of sleepy layered light, I want someone to lay beside me and listen to my rambling thoughts pour out as I drift into oblivion. I will be telling them a story and suddenly be aware that I am not following my self made plot but another line altogether, and suddenly I am skipping words and making sentences with no ending or beginning. I want to be held like that, in the dying sentences listened to by hearing that is fading into a self made noise, but has enough strength to reach around me and tell me good night, sweet dreams, travel far and wide, and make love to me in exotic places on the plain of your dream world.

2004-03-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

We have been given a task. We are suppose to reveal our political standing, our potent views on reality, and our emotional stance on the way things are. This is a challenge. I restate that this blog is for class, or started for class. Thus, when such topics come down from on high...

I was talking with one of my peers the other day during a break in class and he was talking about what a blog is. It is not, he claims, what it claims to be: this is not a journal. A journal, by definition, is something more private. For me my current journal is a black leather book sitting by my bed recording the things that I need recorded and that I have no other outlet for. My classmate claimed then that these blogs are in fact soap boxes, a space in which you blindly rant to unknown people about your own experience. It seems like there is a level of that. I would agree that this is a forum for ranting, and a space to state your piece with out the self consciousness of being in front of people- having no real way to gage their reactions you are free to create whatever your own reality dictates is acceptable. It is a strangely safe medium. I am aware, personally, of a strange thrill that is derived from others having information about me that even those that know me closely may not. It is also a strange mark in my mind that I do not know which people have this information. In a way it makes me more centered. While there is always a level of remediation, we are always expressing ourselves in a series of layered metaphors, true meaning not even really known to ourselves, having another level of exposure to people makes me feel like being truer to myself during everyday interaction. Sarah says, "So, it seems to me that we all need to define our own identity, and then explore that identity in relation to an audience invoked or implied." Identity is a constant progression- to define it would be at once attempting to limit it and instantly making it wrong. The fluidity of identity is what keeps me sane- to attempt to prescribe to one definition of self is to set yourself up for that definition being wrong- and then what? Well...

And then there is the issue of audience. I must have an idea of audience. There are things that I have wanted to write and have not, things that I did not want about my life or my experiences that are held back from a potencially public domain. However, I don't really have any clue. I know some friends read it, as I sent out the link- but I don't know really which friends. I know that some class mates that I would gladly consider friends likely read it. But then there is an odd unknown element as well that lead to the fact that anyone could be reading it. In a random wandering some government official could have stumbled upon it and made it a book mark for spying on the college perspective... I don't have a fucking clue who reads this. Another interesting event, social convention: I know that people are reading each other's online journals... but there is a hesitancy in mentioning it to anyone. I would not ask someone about something that I read about in their journal, no matter how curious I am, unless it came up directly in conversation. There is a private knowledge, a feeling of power that comes from the knowledge.

Clearly I have yet to get into my political views. Defining myself seems somehow painful.... I write here much about what I think, how I view things, the spaces in my life that are some how separated out from the drone of background noise that reality can become. In a way I am writing to make those moments real, to possibly make them resonate with unknown bodies sitting in front of unknown computers in lives and situations that I will never know the full intricacy of. This, however, this controversial dip into my mind, leaves me more exposed. What I have written about so far are things that I am aware are my own... And if you don't like them it doesn't matter. If it makes you uncomfortable, or pleased, or mad, or hateful, or strangely confused, really I don't care. They are reaching out to you, and I am satisfied with that reaching- but they are not for you. However, with a statement that is overtly political you are setting yourself automatically in opposition to others. This is not a soft hazy thing- this is creating other to define yourself. It is also overtly combative, and I don't really want to expose my combative side to people that I have no chance to have a dialogue with. You see, when we are going into battle, and politics have been framed as such, it seems cowardly and silly to state your feelings with out any chance of anyone coming back at you. The point of making statements about politics is to have other people question, confirm, debate and engage you in the discussion. Thus it is a fight, and it is also a growing experience. An attempt to define myself in a manifesto of political stance seems to be setting myself up for stagnation. That, and I am a chickenshit. Yes, this is a surreal medium that allows for little interaction with audience and less knowledge of who is reading what, thus more freedom, but it also has the chance of having very real consequences in "real life." I am not declining as of yet, but I need to put some more thought into how I want to frame myself here, how I want to tie the knots in my noose, how I want the grave to be shaped. If I am going to go in to definition, I want it to be on my own terms.

This is long, but there is more. This is the more that I am interested in. Yesterday had a blur of little sleep and layering knowledge that has not occurred for a while. My dreams fell in shards. I was drawn into places that I have not been, maybe ever. Thought and action and contemplating and emotion. They blended in a new way yesterday. Yesterday felt like a new chapter in the alchemy of soul. Not a life changing forever shift- more based on the assumption that nothing is really coincidence when it comes to it- the weird mix of sleeplessness and splintered dreams, and cold and hot and sweat and tea and sound and quiet were utterly unique. I've written too much today, and it takes to much energy to stay vaguely neutral in my description. Damn it. I'll try again some other time, when the understandings have crystallized and formed truly. Then maybe I can express the dance- right now not so.

2004-03-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

HAPPY SPRING! Yesterday I went into the mountains for a picnic to celebrate the rebirth of everything. There is so much warmth and light out right now, blinding. Its time to turn out, energy flowing out into other places. Thank gods that there are cycles. I rode this morning at 7:30 and didn't have to wear a coat! Squeee! Makes my heart beat in a spring bird rhythm and think about dancing and weddings. Genetic memory of new food and long days and hard focused work flood back in a thunderstorm. I think that I will have to call a thunderstorm this spring. We haven't had a real one in so long. I want one that makes mud and overfills gutters. Where there is screaming and passion in every flash of photographic electricity. There should be heat in the rain and vibrations on wet bodies that dance in the storm.

I just got done being at the dentist here on campus. I think that it was one of the most kind and informative dental visits that I have ever participated in. Mary, my oral agent, was most kind and gentle. She explained to me all of the things that are not so good with my teeth, what I could do, and even gave me a flossing lesson. The doctor, a slightly distracted but amusing older gentleman, went over what I need to have done, and put my work into priorities so that I could get the important things done first. I would highly suggest a visit if anyone has the option and needs a dental visit. I also bought a new super sonic high gizmo tooth brush with carrying case. I am told that this item will make my teeth shiny and perfect and will also keep them in my head for a long time. This is a good thing, so I thought, what the hell? If it saves me 300$ in dental work, and cost 100$ its a deal, right? That was my reasoning anyway. Most likely not the most responsible buy I've ever made... But then its not something entirely pointless like shoe rack that rotates, or a self cleaning wallet, or a vacuum that can clean a cat. I did find out that I have to start using fluoride... This is a little disturbing to me, but Mary was very insistent. Fluoride makes a close friend of mine sick. I have always assumed that anything that makes him ill is most likely something that is making me ill with out my knowing it. While this hasn't stopped me from eating and buying somethings that he cant use, I do put more conscious thought into it. That and I am very fond of my Tom's of Maine Tooth Paste. It is comfortably not sweet. It makes my mouth feel cleaner then most other tooth pastes, and it is icky enough that no one steals it. I think that I will compromise with Mary, though she doesn't know it. I think that I will use the floride at night, and use my Tom's in the morning. Really, I am pretty sure that I am procrastinating right now. Sitting in the library and listening to the sound of thinking, I am merely pausing between work. I should get out my list. See what sort of work I really have on my plate.

Spring.
Goats with matted hair standing in a field eating on grass that is the undenignable color of birth and contemplating the time when they would be crawling and leaping in craggy wind swept summer peaks where hikers do not go and marmots fear to tread. In thawing ground in a corner of the granite cliff there is a patch of earth licked into life by hot light and within is a plant that is waiting and it will sprout up and be mistaken for a purple ruby hiding and sparkling some dawn by a passing child who is riding silent in a backpack, parents unaware that she has spotted god. Hidden by the boards in my back yard there are baby mice wrapped warm in moist leaves and they are dreaming about the faint smell of dried berries that are hanging above them in unclaimed clumps and are listening to their parents whisper about the one who went into our house last night and didn't come back because of the traps that were set, and the new brood will be smarter and faster and more cunning then the last, and nature will take back the stolen fields that once lived here. In the dawn light that I am waking to more and more there will be a calling, until soon I will open the window and let it fill my wanderings with toys of light and dreams of snakes and when I open my eyes they will be met with a cool air that promises to be 100 degrees by ten and I will smile and uncurl from my shorter hibernation and think about the half woven meaning that sits piled under my eyelids, and glance at my old brown alarm clock with red symbols of time and be amazed, because it is two hours before the alarm would even think of threatening, but it feels like I have slept for a thousand years and I will get up and go deer alert into the day.

2004-03-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

We are only a few days from spring. Does that mean some sort of catastrophic snow is on its way? Possible. I feel like I've been holding my breath all winter, waiting, whining, waiting and wailing for light. Its nice out today.
I saw an old friend yesterday. I don't have many old friends, freinds that stretch past my first year of college are virtually non existent. There was a change in me that felt awkward to attempt to communicate to people from the old world. There was a shift in consciousness that felt too big a gap to fill when talking to someone I half knew when we were both raging balls of hormones. There are some that I am curious about, one that I have even tried to get a hold of. He was in the military, and I remember him as a first love. I remember seeing him during an assembly, that must have been our sophomore year. He was sitting two rows behind me and several people to the left, maybe right, memory can be transposed that way. He was powerfully quiet and stoically interesting. Possibly a young incarnation of a roman god of war. He was going to come see me during my freshman year, first semester. On the day that he was slated to arrive I dressed up in anticipation of old flames burning, or smoldering at least. I don't know if I would have been able to say all the things that I now wish I could, but I would have tried. How different paths can be with small events. He never came or called. The next time I heard from him he called unfortunately while I was drunk or stoned in my dorm room. It was a brief conversation in which I mentioned my new boyfriend. I haven't heard from him since. I still dream about him occationally, seeing him and telling him that I have been looking. Occationally I think that I see him on the street. Ghost.
So this old friend and I wandered the streets of Fort Collins. With him time is out of place, or at least disjointed. It is refreshing to be pulled out of mundane reality. First we wandered from the bus stop to the river, where we sat and looked at the cold clear winter water. Winter's stillness brings clarity, we can give it that. He pulled from his bag: a thermos with hot water, a small iron teapot, tea, and two cups. It was smooth and we slipped into old talk easily. Every time I see him, despite our years of knowing, I still feel a nervous rush. After that rush calmed and we commented on the oddness of humans for a while we wandered over to campus to talk to my roommate and then to catch a bus. The sun was hot and I was parched even as our clasped hands sweat out sweet tea. We waited at the bus stop and I was reminded of coolness. When I see him there is always a slow unwrapping of my mind, like reawakening to what I am. It takes a while, and is in stages. The older I get the more I forget the path to that awakening. That forgetting needs to stop soon. We came back to my house, which he had never seen, so a tour was in order. I proudly showed off the parts of the house that I spent cleaning. They give me a peaceful feeling now, instead of the stress they held. We wandered and laid down and looked at each other, let talk and words flow when they wanted, picking up on our own waves of thought as we chose, and they tended to mingle. There is a simple vision in those seconds and hours that I am always amazed by. When he left to catch the bus home I was sad to see him go, but these visits inevitably leave me with a feeling that I have held something more genuine then the rest of the world in my hand. Despite a closeness we see each other rarely. Originally we thought it was a universal conspiracy, and maybe it is, but I think that the guards are looking the other way. We've seen each other at least 5 times in the last two years, possibly a new record. Maybe our eyes meeting is what is dangerous. His eyes take me beyond words into a place of other expression, which must be counter the laws of this world. That state of beyond words may be the highest I have reached here.

2004-03-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

I got lost in the library today. It's so overwhelming, when you realize that there is that much knowledge out there... Sure, much of it is saying the same things... But its still a lot. I found the moving journal stacks today. The shelves are all bunched together, and you follow your numbers and when you get there you push a button, and they very quietly shift over. Its pretty cool. I had all sorts of visions of being trapped in between them, and I felt sneaky being there, like it was a place that only those with a special pass or and eye scan should be.
I am suffering from a head cold, which is nasty and icky. I hate being sick. Its worse when its really nice outside. It feels like your going against nature being ill. The rest of the world is being reborn and all you want to do is lay down in a warm heap and be bitchy. Its not really a bad cold, just stuffy. I don't even feel that ill. I was up at the cabin last weekend where a friend had the same thing. The oddest part about this strange little bug is that only one of your nostrils gets stuffed up. I think that's strange anyway. My friend kept laying on his side and attempting to clear his sinuses. I slept most of the night on one side trying to be able to breath out of that one side of my nose. Nothing works. I am on some brand X decongestant now... and I wonder if I should have given up the extra 5 bucks and gone for the good stuff. I even compared labels trying to make sure that they had the same ingredients. Oh well.
Dusk out. Dusk is the most beautiful work. It is like dust, but smoother and with a softer side. It is like done, but less final and more of a word that feels like a transition. Dusky makes me think of shadows that are turning the world a comfortable blue haze purple. Dusk it letting go of day, and moving into the emotion of night, but with out the harsh dark. There is a safety in dusk, watching the world move. It is a time of day that I don't feel stressed. It is a sudden breath after being constricted, but it doesn't make you pant. I better go for a walk before the world slip's past this sublt kindness and into chill midnight blue.

2004-03-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

Today was not as productive as I had envisioned it... But really, I don't mind. I think its odd that I am okay being alone now. I used to really crave people, and these days it seems that a day by myself, doing nothing really, is just fine. I went to sleep really early and dreamed something chaotic, then woke up at 7:30. I had slept until full, so I got up stretching and thinking. I worked all day on a story, not really work, but contemplating none the less. When I create stories they seem to come from somewhere else, really just appear as I write them or think of them, like uncovering a person while they sleep. There are questions that I ask the story, and it tells me what the answer is. Sometimes there is not answer, and I know that is not part of the story. Its just asking the right things, so that the story comes out, like an interview with the spirit that's out there. It was late one night and I was writing in my journal on our front porch. My journal is black leather on the outside and white unlined paper on the inside. I was writing mundane things, just hum drum thoughts on what was going on in my head, in the world, and I was struck by a thought. What if each thing that we write appears else where- not as in we are creating another reality, which is possible I guess as well, but just appearing on the pages of some book in another place. There are monks there, I saw, and they are attempting to translate these markings even as they appear in the books before them. These pages tell, for them, of great and strange things. They look to these texts for stories of god. There is a young adept that reads about my dream and sees the story of beginning, and another that reads my emotional ranting and sees the inner workings of the mind. Their culture is quiet, but there must be a great passion and devotion sitting under it. The monks wear brown cowls, that are very plain, and a coarse fabric. They sometimes hum as they work, and rarely sleep. There are no windows in the study where they are working on my fragmented pack of words. It is always shadowed, but never cold. A cave where they are reading things that come from another time and place. Maybe they are reading the future, or the past. Maybe they are reading something that will never be encountered in their line of reality. For me it is strange and wonderful that everything is possible, and that there is no line between real and unreal per say. It could be that every thought, every dream is real in some place. This is not a postulation on the possibility- this is the reality that is, because there is no reason it is not. Think of all the things that people believe in that they never see. People believe in persons that they have never met, places that they have never been, that things existed that they never experienced. Is it so far out there that a multitude of other spaces exist that are a part and a piece of our minds? We live most of our lives from hearsay. So, lets dictate what the world is. Not the way is has to be, but the way some part of it somewhere, even outside of this life or place and time, is. There is a black glass plain. There are slight hills and the glass is not reflecting any one point of light, because the star that gives this place light is diffused by gases. There is a space worn rough and slightly deeper then the rest of the sheer glass surface. There is a girl kneeling in front of this space, bent over like she is attempting to vomit into the basin, but she is perfectly still. Wind whips down and carries lung searing black dust, but it does not touch her. She is pale to the point of being slightly green, and on the black backdrop of this strange world she stands out. She is staring into a liquid which is clear like water, but moves like quick silver. There is no sense of depth because the bottom is black. It could go forever, and it could end in an inch. There is no knowing. She is hunched over this bowl, and there is blood dripping down one of her knees. It is rolling down and around, and sliding frictionless into the bowl. It swirls there, like there is some unseen current in the frozen space, and then patterns begin to form. I do not know what she sees there, or why, that is hers.

2004-03-14T19:39:00.000-07:00

I got to shoot a gun for the first time today. It was a strange rush, and also very serious. I asked about how bullets work, how they are shot, I loaded the clip, looked down the barrel. It was a small gun, a 22. Lighter then I ever would have imagined, so much easier then I would have thought. It was me and three men. All of them had shot before. We were up on BLM or National Forest land. The wind was blowing, cold, and sunny in the early afternoon, clouds rushing through the valley and snow in contrast patches on the ground. We shot at cans mostly. The first time it went off, when my friend was trying it out, I flinched hard. I was startled by the pitch of it, the higher groan bang of it. Till we got through the first ten rounds I blinked hard at every shot. At one point I became aware of the sour tang of gun powder floating in the air. We smelled like it. The casings flew to the right, jumped a good six feet before landing. They were so small. I loaded the clip, learning to push in the bullets with my thumb, learning the oil feel of the copper tip of the bullet, watching as I made cans jump into the air, making the first solid shot on a coke can that had been giving us problems. My heart beat in time to the shots, fast and loud, confused. Guns are grey. At one point they were not so grey, more black and white. I am not sold on guns, and I don't think that I will be a member of the NRA anytime soon, but there was a strange solidarity to it as well. Standing on a windy day with my friends, my boys, taking turns, watching and making comments, becoming more steady, learning how not to shake when I realized that there was a possible death in my hands, becoming confident with loading and slowly, evenly, firing. Weapons are a strange place for me. They are made, for the most part, as tools of violence to use against other people. This, for me, is bad. On the other hand, I don't want the people in power to be the only ones with these weapons. I trust my friend who owns this gun. He is educated about it, careful, respectful of it, and gentle with his knowledge about it. There is no way to know about people. Shooting was easy, simple in the motions and the stance, and though I am not a pro I know that I could shoot this gun again with out trouble. It was simple, and it was very complicated, understanding the inner works of me in it. I expected to be very excited, or unimpressed. I expected some strong gut reaction. Truth is, I did like it. It is something I would like to learn to do decently, something that I should know more about. It was not, however, the biggest high of my life. I was nervous, but after two rounds that wore down. I want to go shooting again. One of my friends said that we should all get a gun, so that we can go together and not switch off. I don't know how I feel about that. You see, I feel that to have a gun of my own, I would have to understand it all, and I would have to be willing to use it for its purpose- to shot someone. It was not built for shooting cans, or coyotes, but humans. It is something to contemplate, but I feel more educated, which I think is always good.

2004-03-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

I am running away from home, dashing off to a rough country where winds howl through the valleys and there are blinding stars, so bright they keep you awake. It is spring break now, but not quite spring outdoors. Do wind chimes sound in the winter? If they do they are out of my range of hearing, too cold to have music playing a soundtrack to the day or night. Now I am beginning to hear them, low chong heavy rhythm with the overlay of bird flute lacing on top. Yes, its not quite spring but the mint in the front yard is poking out new greens, just barely above the dead leaves. I think this week I will invest in a rake, and I will scour the yard, trim things back, and make ready for the coming season. I think that I will also clean this house, deep corners and organizing. I will wipe out all the sediment of winter resentment, angry cobwebs whipping in the air. I think that I will focus on the surface well wiped. As I clean I will cry, I will maybe wash out the dust that's been left under the bed of my heart. I will wash and mop and sigh all of this crusty memory. Those memories that leave me tense or sad or wondering in a painful way, I will lay them out and see which are worth fretting over, and in the end they will all be carefully wrapped and labeled and stored, easy to access and easy to put away. All these moments in the past that we cling to, they are fragments of once was. They lay about our minds in piles and disorganized moments, some in categories, most in baskets and on shelves. They sit there, and as we wander in during the middle of the night we trip over them, land in spread out piles of them, relive them over and over in fascinating redundancy. I will clear my space I think, and at the end I will still have them all, but they will be softly familiar, put in locations safe and secure, but they will not weigh me down as I move forward and side ways and down into the hot cricket cold tea shadowed stone cool water and sweat skin moments that are still waiting for me to catch up.

2004-03-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

I had two good friends over tonight. They are scheduled to be married in late June. They exude love, like the perfume air of flowers in bloom, or musky scent of pine trees on warm nights. They have a long story, longer then some I suppose, but not as long as others. I was there the night she went to his dorm room door to take him things to fix a cold and I knocked on the door and ran to force her to talk to him. She was so angry. I was a part of several practical jokes they played on each other in a butterfly courtship flirting that lasted another year before they could say that they were truly in love. I was there when her roommate had a crush on him. I have sat with them and watched Durango mountain sunsets. I was there the night he wrote her, confessing his love, and the night he came over asking advice on a gift. Their joy pours through me, so excited, like they are both breathing for the first time, like it is the first time they have really known God, though they are both deeply spiritual people of the Christian faith. I will known them as we all grow old, because that is the kind of friends they are. I will stand near her at the wedding, dress in the most tactful bridesmaid dress I have ever seen, something that I want to dance in, or wear bare foot out into a clearing with aspen leaves raining down on me while Beethoven plays in the back ground. I will stand near her and I will cry, letting hours of makeup and prep time run down my cheeks in rivulets. I will not be able to stop, because I can hear their vibrations nearing one another in a note of yes. There will be no dancing at their wedding. It is at a Baptist church and apparently they don't agree with that. But I will step outside, drawing them with me in my heart, and maybe a few of the other bridesmaids who know that god is the air under your heels, and we will dance in the parking lot praising and thanking with wild spins, I will thank in my own way that one day like this will exist for my friends, and I will thank that there is space for moments of sugar sunlight and sweet violets in this vibrating violin string world.

2004-03-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

Last night when the moon rose it was pink. The clouds crossed it making strange shapes out of her body, like if they covered her completely she would be gone forever, lost to the world. Now she is glowing out the window of the study, white and grey on black nothing. I can't see stars tonight, she is alone, lounging in a moth wing glow. It was a strange weekend, filled with drunken ramblings, of other people, and tired anger. I was furious for a while, and laughed till I cried at one point, smiled till my cheeks hurt and then curled up in my smoke draped mind to sleep through a day. I laid in the sun today. Thinking about the universe as I laid on a green brown carpet under the tree, I imagined our small reality. Maybe long ago we climbed up a huge tree. It was a massive tree, so large and complex that we ended up calling it world. By the time we reached the top we had forgotten what we labored towards, and we looked around and saw nothing but air, and we were afraid. We tried to get down, to find the roots, the truth, but we had moved up so long, we had forgotten the down, we became lost. People traveled in different directions, all seeking the trunk, all looking for the answers, the one path that would lead to the earth. Ideas became branches, off shooting here and there, those paths walked most often grew strong to carry the weight, but it always ended in empty space. Some claimed to have found the trunk, some took leaps and bounds to other branches, all forgot the language that they came with, maybe the one that the directions are written in. Wars happened. Fights over branch space, fights over leaves, fights over the fruit of the tree. We cut into its wood, mining for nothing that we truly needed, finding the blood of life, tapping it and sucking it out, and weakening the branches. There were some that found a path down. They made their way up the thoughts to a root of sorts, but it was larger, and went down farther then the eye could see. If they walked around it they found that there were many branches leading to this one place, many paths leading to the place where the root could be found. They travel down, and there are no thoughts, beliefs or ideas anymore. It is smooth here, and there is little to cling to. There is comfort in branches of thought, complex leaf society, knowing the familiar places. The trunk is exposed, and cold wind can blow here, and it is tempting to go back, or climb off. Both climbing down and falling are a type of letting go. There is a lust smell of Eden wafting up from the bottom of the world, secret cricket angels singing, and soft iris beds...

2004-03-04T14:42:00.000-07:00

So once, not so very long ago, there was a super hero named Aquatica Man. Aquatica was fairly rejected by super hero clubs in general. He attempted first to join the men's only Hero's of the Universe club, but they told him that his name sounded too much like erotica man, and he left hanging his head. Next he approached the slightly less conventional heroines of Society club, but they took offense at the man in his title and chased him away with feminist banners and glares of laser death. He then came to a small bar that was said to allow heroes of all kinds called the Salty Myth (it was down by the dock, which Aquatica liked very much any way). The Salty Myth stank of dried fish and dirty spandex, but it had a nice community of drunken super people that liked to tell stories and discuss religion.
Everything would have continued just fine for Aquatica Man, if it hadn't been for his arch enemy, Flame Father. Flame Father had it out for Aquatica since they were in day care together. Aquatica would always walk by small fires that Flame Father (then Flame Son) was starting and inadvertently put them out. Aquatica didn't have much control over his powers, then or during the time of our story. His main power was to exude humidity, but he could occationally create rain, and once, during a fierce battle with an evil squid that was terrorizing a picturesque Irish fishing town, he was able to suck the entire bay of water into his very moist aqua socks and hold it there until the hapless squid died. This last feat, however, had never repeated itself. Aquatica Man attributed his power to a pair of mythical water socks he had acquired from his grandfather, and wore his blue and black flexible foot ware everywhere he went. Often when Flame Son would find a small corner in which to stare at a stick or bundle of grass until it ignited, he would wait with anticipation as it grew, and then suddenly sputtered out. Always, he would turn around to find Aquatica Boy behind him, watching with curiosity. Not only did Flame Son developed a complex around this, he also became a raging alcoholic. Having tracked Aquatica Man for many years, Flame Father saw his chance one night when Aquatica Man stumbled from the bar arm and arm with Chiseled Features Gurl. Flame Father waited till everyone had gone home and then lit the bar aflame with his magic vision, sure that Aquatica Man was distracted. When Aquatica Man heard of the disastrous fire he knew who was to blame. He of course wanted revenge, and he also knew that Flame Father would be celebrating until late at the Bad Guy's Den. However, because of an off chain of events and a foot fetish of Gurl, Aquatica Man had left his precious zapatos under the table at the bar. Now he was helpless. He felt fairly dry, but that could be the extreme hangover of the night before. He walked to the bar to admit defeat to Flame Father, and maybe punch him once, just to get his disappointment out of his system.
Aquatica Man entered the bar to glares and anger, glanced around and not seeing Flame Father quickly exited the run down slum. He then made his way over to Flame Fathers apartment, which was on the fourth floor of an abandoned industrial complex. The sky was dark, and Aquatica Man walked carefully with bare feet through broken glass and old rotting wood. He knocked and heard the door open. Flame Father was in a well lit room packing up his assortment of belongings.
"Hello Aquatica, nice to see you here."
"I have come to tell you that I am beaten." Aquatica noticed that Flame was clean shaven, and looking spry and young, very different from their other meetings.
"Come and sit and have a cup of coffee with me."
They sat at a box coffee table and sipped piping hot coffee for a few minutes, then Flame cleared his throat and said, "I really need to apologize Aquatica. So I have been going to AA for a while, and last night was the first time I drank in about three months. I went way over board, and fell into old habits of stalking you and such. Really though, I think what happened was for the best. Starting a fire and not having you put it out really cleared up my neurosis, and made me realize how silly I've been. Also, burning down a bar forced me to detach myself from a source of alcohol in an extreme way. Thank you."
"No," relpied a teary eyed Aquatica, "Thank you. I was sinking all of the money I earned saving that village into that bar, now I can start anew. I am just sad that I lost my socks, I feel a little lost with out any super powers."
"Oh, speaking of, in my drunken craziness I picked these up. " Flame Father held up a pair of slightly scorched blue and black aqua socks, that were dripping a little. "I picked them up to gloat over, but this morning I just felt bad. I think that I am going to try to become a super hero, instead of a super villain. You can have these back. I was thinking of going somewhere dry and sandy and constructing housing out of sand turned into glass. You know, if you wanted to come, I bet that anywhere there's sand the people need water."
So Flame Father and Aquatica Man became partners, and learned to work as a splendid team. They had many adventures... But that's another story.

2004-03-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm distracted today. I should be writing, and reading, getting ready, staying on task. Instead I have been writing stories and thinking about fantasy. I don't have anything solid to think about, and its not that my brain is spinning, so much as sitting in a mass and bubbling occationally. There is a tiny fly in this room. Its been here for days. It bothers me. I keep asking it to be caught by the spiders that live here, but it is too clever for that, and I cant quit bring myself to smash it mercilessly. At least it doesn't make noise. I was somewhere far away in my dreams last night. I woke up feeling very rested. For a while, a few months ago, I lost my dreams. They wouldn't surface when I tried to call them up. They fled as I tried to watch them. A tool of self knowledge that I had come to rely on floated away for a bit. Last night in class we were talking about discourse theory, about ideology and the way it works, the subtle ways of hegemony. Talking about reality, or the lack there of, always makes me buzz. Its like I am standing on the edge of a massive drop off, and there is, at this point, no firm knowledge of gravity, so there is a very real possibility that I would be able to move in directions other then down if I was willing to lean out. I am always leaning there, but haven't found the set of words that allow me to go over. My toes quiver on the edge of this precipice, wanting to stop holding on. I plan to do more research, to check and see if I step out there are other thoughts there, solid ideas that I would step on. I want to reach the edge of theory, and move further. It is my strange and erratic dream that comes in classrooms while people talk about abstract ideas and fanciful yearnings. That is my secret yearning, not so secret if you know how to ask. I want to find the space where reality dissolves, and move into it. Its a matter of finding the right words, the right tools, the right forgetting. In the mean time I am sitting in the office, papers snowfall chaotic on the floor, and boxes of books waiting for their turn on the shelf. Maybe I will forgo work a little longer, breath and think, read a little of what is not on my list. Play, just a bit longer, and maybe after this afternoon I will be ready to read and think and write about research and all of that. In the mean time, there is a streak of light across my foot that highlights the freckle that sits on my left arch.

2004-03-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

There were sighs last night, and salty thought, i couldn't recall what I was doing before, and fire.
I watched the fire eating flesh of wood, never thinking, utterly contained in its knowledge of self.
I picked at the melted burn holes in the carpet, wished for hard wood floors because they always remind me of light.
There is always a moment in winter when it feels like death and cold have stretched on forever. It may come the second day, or the second to last, and it may stay a week, or only a few seconds- but it comes. It is a reserved acceptance of mortality, a clenching of the stomach and a final resignation to the cycles which are beyond us. No super human can fly forth, and put out their hand, and stop the biting wind that steals glowing thoughts. It slips around them, gets up under their cape from the back, hits their neck in a lovers touch and drains their powers to dust and snow.
Sweat freezes, and we are dark.
Its when everything is painted primer grey, and no amount of tea or hot house flowers will flush you. Maybe lovers are immune, drinking in the pheromone scents of another long night that was too short.
Last night, after my mind flew far, I ended up missing all my dream classes, and I was so far behind, and I had to take care of these kids, who were cool, but I was late again to class and once was alright but after that, was I failing and I was lost, all the buildings and the corners and distracting moments of chaotic people talking in a car, but campus is back that way, and where are we going, there is something I need, no books and I'm not ready.
You can imagine my relief when I woke up.
But more then escaping an escapade of stress I was glad to see blue sky dripping through the wind bent branches, as I looked upside down at the sky from my pillow.
The fabric of winter is rough on my skin, like sacking made into a punk-rock shirt, its out of fashion and was never that hot to start with.
Wrap me in long arms and soft cotton that's worn thin like a second skin of silk.
I want to be held, my head comfortable with no moments, listening to a quiet heart beat that speeds as I shift in to an eye snapping moment of connection.
Then it can shift, all focus tied into a finger brushing carefully back a loose hair, into the crux behind my ear and lingering moments where the ridges of this finger never touch my cheek, but the molecules rub magnetic fire into my neurons.
Utterly here, no where but in this one breath of time, pulling in all my satellite thoughts to feel one moment of purity.
On my alter there are moons that hang like blue perfect fruit, and there are sacrifices tied in bundles of woven flax and string died by sunsets.
On my alter there are a thousand sighs, and moments of praise that glow from their mahogany box.
There is a velvet cushion that is deep red, and it is to watch and pray on, but there are sharp pebbles that appear sometimes and dig into unwary flesh.
There, on my alter, are a hundred weapons waiting to be called on, and only one perfect flower that changes with the light.
Moonstones pave the path which lead to caverns that are dark and earthy. Sand grits into your shoes or socks if you are foolish enough to wear them, and you can walk into an endless black that has no shadows. In this cave the only thing that you can hear is your true voice, and the only thing you can see is your true self, and few survive its hollow drumming.
On my alter there is a spider that lives in the eyes of a statue, and she weaves answers to questions, and then feeds them to her babies.
There is water that shimmers with sparks of life, life water from bays in the Caribbean, sweetly salty.
Everything there is dangerous and healing, trying and teaching, and nonsensical and at times silly.
Time to get back.

2004-02-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh. Deep breath. Breathing and sighing. Thinking much. I had forgotten the way my mind does gymnastics when I feed it constantly with real information, real ideas and real thoughts. I think that it had been over burdened with emotional fluid, and that has drained somewhat as the weeks of education have taken up electric space. The other day Dylan and I were walking around campus (all of my most surreal experiences seem to happen with her) and we walked into tree gullies and hidden dark spaces. I was lovely. I wore short sleeves and never thought about cold. We walked and saw a boy putting his bike against the curve of a door before running into a building. We watched him think hard about if he should lock it, or just dash in, trusting the universe. He looked at Dylan and I and decided these ambling girls were no threat, so ran in. I turned to Dylan and said, "I would really like to move his bike just to the other side of the door." As I finished talking she dashed up to the door and went into the hallway about ten feet, gave me the signal and I moved it. Then we ran giggling around the building. Was this act of subtle defiance really funny? Or necessary...? At any rate, it was well worth it. Then we found a building with a fountain in it that I had been told about. Dyl told me that it used to be a women's dorm and were the fountain was there used to be a pool. One night boys (GASP) snuck in and went swimming naked in the pool. The dorm mom got so up in arms the next day she had the pool paved over. Urban college mytharific. Then, I took the bus home, buying a tulip on the way. As I rode I watch the tulip, its subtle soft and pointed smooth. When I bought it the petals were closed, and as I rode, the twenty min ride, they opened. When a tulip just opens it smells sweet like summer and honey and dream wool cats. The sun was beginning its slow decent, and the day felt truly lived. I walked from the stop a little chilly, and considered the bright yellow with splinters of red that were the petals, and the glow of life within the plant...

2004-02-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

I was going to do real work here in the library with the sudden gap in my schedule... But blogging is real work, right? I mean, I started it for class, so...

These gaps have been forming in my reality. Not so huge that they would force me into a new pattern, sublte and constant. The solidness of things has been less... Consistent of late. I will lean against something that is clearly suppose to be utterly solid, like a wall, and it will seem to shift and waver for a few moments. Now, there are several ways to explain this away: I could be hungry, sleepy, or distracted. These are the first self blaming techniques that people participate in when they are making excuses for realities inconsistencies. There are only a few other options: that the realization that the universe is composed of tiny particles vibrating at a terrific and perfect pitch has some how made it possible for my brain waves to interfere and thus make things slightly less solid. Maybe a form of science would have me believe this, and it could be true, or it could be a conspiracy. I cant say more right now, who knows who's reading this... It could be that I am super human and am slowly coming into my powers, and these powers include making solid objects not so solid... That could be cool, but only if I master it and then am able to use it consistently. However, if my powers are at their zenith now, well, that would be lame.

There is always the possibility that reality is to blame, and not me. What if that is the case. We seem to assume that the world that we see, touch, feel, smell, lick, and groan at is indeed true. That any lack of perception or gap in that understanding is our own fault. We assume that everything is knowable. We also have naturalized this train of thought... And believe that this is the way it has always been. In fact, this conception of reality was not really dominant until the Royal College in England got a scientific bug up its ass, less then 200 years ago. Damn. Before that there was magic for magic's sake. This is not the magic of parlor tricks and toothpaste (how do they get the stripes in cogate? Magic). This magic was a magic that dominated reality and said that if your will, your words and your heart were strong, reality was only a breath away from shifting in your direction.

Now the Royal College did help stop some pretty petty persecution of witches and warlocks, but it also relegated magic to the closet. Forced people with a creative mind to be considered dangerous, subversive, and crazy. Thinking in an associative way was considered a disease, that needed to be destroyed and bred out of people. The romantic period in writing was a backlash to that. Scientific thinking stopped burnings, but it introduced eugenics and electric shock therapy. There's always a price I suppose. Reality became a much safer place, less malleable and manipulatable, and potencially knowable. However, that made it a bit ridged and tight, people couldn't breath.

Take time for example. Totally made up. Time passes, timeline, timeout, time and time again. Have you ever spent time with someone where you were able to move out of the time that consensus has created? I have, and it is a disconcerting and invigorating process. Time goes slow when your bored, moves fast when you are happy, having a good time. This should prove to us that time is not that real. Even the clock seems to be inconsistent when faced with intense experience. You look up, and time has "flown" by. You had the clock there, what happened? Should have been consistent. Magic, real magic, magic that is part of a flowing and very frightening inconsistent place that we live in.

Despite sciences best efforts we are still living in a magic place, only now we don't have the space in our minds to know it, and therefore control it. Electricity: even if you can describe how it works and why it works, its still magic, and a ritual goes with it each time you use it. "Well, I turn on the switch that makes the connection for the flow of energy, which heats up a filament. The electric current came from a giant spinning coil of wire and that makes electricity because... And a light turns on." You can go on with your explanations, but I counter, "I wave this stick and dance in this specific patter, that sends a message to the gods that we really fucking need water, and the message gets to them somehow... And then they send rain." Magic, all, that we don't have a firm grip on. Its sad really. I think that people could do with a little hocus pocus. A touch of the erotic unknowable. Science seems to keep us, at least on its surface level, from celebrating the utter impossibility of life. We are, or are we, either way we enjoy it. Or we should. If I could tap it, stand in a room that was not a room but a space filled with reality, I expect it would feel like ghosts kissing my eyelids and a rush of hot heating vent air and ecstasy and the moon disrobing her cape of stars, all at the same time.

2004-02-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

I have been reading about magic and language. Or language as magic. The composing imagination. I enjoy the idea that words hold power, that the utterances that we make may have been born of a universal communication that we have yet to discover. Its shocking to think that all of our language is abitrary, that it is the regurgitation of generations of randomly firing synapses. Cabalists beleive that in the numerology of language there is a hidden language of god. That the names of all things are traced back to their one essence and god spoke them into reality. According to Aggripa, a magus in the 1500's who hated most of everything and was attempting to move beyond words, Eve means life, and Adam means earth. This would mean that Eve was the creator, or at least, for Aggripa, that women deserved more respect then they got. I was amazed to read that people have been talking discourse theory and magic and rhetoric every thing a "paradigm shift" occurs. Interesting pattern to look at, think about. I did homework all day, if you couldn't tell, and volunteered all weekend at a conference that was being held in town. It was busy and focused.

When you shut your eyes do you ever discover that you no longer can hold onto any sense of size? This happens to me occationally, and I will close my eyes and be huge, far beyond the bounds that I know my flesh makes, or I will be so thin and streched, or a tiny dime sized dot. To open my eyes dispels the feeling, but often I cant escape it once it begins in the blackness behind eyelids. It will change, shifting in a lava lamp fashion between shapes, and sometimes it will be themed, all small or all large. I can focus on one part of my body, like a toe or a finger, but then there is just a morphing with a bit more of a center. I don't move locations, I am not out of my body, I am just in a strange and infinite space that occupied the same space as my body. It is effected by temperature, but not as much as you would think. For a while I thought that it occurred when I was at the exact temperature where you cease to feel, and you are floating. I think it is around 80 degrees. But then I found that wasn't the way it was. Hot and cold in extreme seem to shock you out of it, but maybe it is more distracting. Most often I will be laying on my back, but there have been exceptions. There is no control. I have tried to make my self large or small, one dimensional or multiple dimensions, but there doesn't seem to be any connection with thought. It is not caused by stress or relaxation. There is nothing I trace it to. There are times it is like water, and times it is like rain, and rarely it splits me in two or more. Like an imagined fractal of my sprite body. Maybe it is a lack of some vitamin? More salt in my diet? A friend that I was expecting just pulled up across the street. I will go greet him and put aside work for the night.

2004-02-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

To sleep, perchance to dream... I dreamt last night about the ocean again. Dylan and I were walking along the coast, and it was a grey day, and the beach was steep and had black sand. The waters were rough, when are they not? We walked until we found a gazebo in an inlet. The waves would rush into the bottom half of the gazebo every 45 seconds, and on the floor there was all sorts of sea life. We took off our shoes, and there were other kids there. There were seals and dolphins, even though the dolphins were out of place in what seemed like a northern place. A pair of twin girls had been swimming with the dolphins on the other beach, but here in the gazebo there was less room. One seal had a zipper on its stomach, and I thought it might be a magickal animal that had a person inside, so I unzipped him. Inside were different sea animals, and they were all stuffed plush toys. I quickly rezipped him. Then we looked at shells; they were really brilliant glowing, oil on water slick polished wet glowing. One that I picked up was a huge cowry shell that had silver and red on it. Another was a jeweled peach and sand color. I asked the other kids if we were allowed to take them, and they said no.
Its too bad really, as I would have liked to have one when I woke up, and more and more were washing ashore...

2004-02-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

Today I didn't wear a coat as a rode home from school. Warm wind caressed my exposed neck and I smiled at everyone I passed. Warm days in the middle of winter make me glow, feel blood moving, sap running. I sat out as long as I could, watching the warmth leach out of the day, like feeling the warm space left by a lover cool on the sheets. I want to wear summer skirts that flow around my legs, and curl my toes into grass, smell bark and run laughing under the moon. But I suppose winter must be lovely too... I yearn for cold (not nearly so consistently as I ache for warmth) when the sun is cruel and nights too hot to sleep in. Still, I cant wait for summer nights when sweat still seeps out of pores and runs down my moons. I'll laugh for joy for being in that sweet hot hot moment... Now I'll just smile at brief memories and be glad for the contrast of freezing.

2004-02-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

I slept last night in a twisted wrinkle in reality. The plasticity of everything just bent in such a way that I was caught in a corner and forced to try and reconcile my dreams. I woke up, many times, odd for me, and once at three am got a glass of water. I was hot and dry, maybe fevered? But when in the dream I had said to a companion, "This is another reality, isn't it? Just as real?" And they had nodded, and when I woke that truth stuck with me, that knowing that I had been elsewhere, but now, was again shifted. I didn't really want to leave that sleep, where I felt like I was pushing my knowledge to the edge of what words cover, which is the edge itself if you can hear that. But this reality pushed in, and I lost the memories of all my nighttime revelations, like when the moments of clarity come while stoned or drunk, and you know they will be lost, not because it is the drug giving you the clarity, but because the drug and the sensations around you and the fog that will form around you will all be part of the formula, and that you wont get it back. At least each time that clarity comes, it is new. I woke up and read a book that is equating magick (though the author spells it magic, which is a silly mistake, since he is talking about true reality mind bending shifting truth, and not the parlor bunny in the hat tricks) with words, language, literacy and "the composing imagination." So far, its fascinating. The way that people viewed and view the power of words, how the power has been known, how magick and rhetoric come up when ever there is a serious paradigm shift. Fascinating I think. Phanatasy is the moments before our mind translates the physical reality in to a series of words, it is the pure flexible before the clean and tight ordered reality of words. Fascinating. I like that I am reading this, because we are in a shift. A wrinkle in the story line, leading into something I would say. Maybe that's just wishful thinking. So that was another shift, this shift, in magick and words, that was coming into the morning. Scholars and Magus long ago said that knowledge was always shifting sand, that to know a thing was not to know its binary (as Derrida would have us think) but to know its likenesses. But these go on and on, in a detailed web that is always shifting at the same time that it is forming. Shifting sand that is knowledge, and we can call on the stars, but not on other things with voices with words, because they are dangerous. Words are dangerous. I learned that to become an expert, the average amount of time you must spend time doing something is about 20-30 years. this is to be truely fluent, and then to make dramatic change. I plan to continue the study of words, and thier dangerous powers, and magick, and we'll see where it all ends up...

2004-02-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have a semblance of fluidity tonight. I'm putting off my long cold bike ride by writing... Ahoy (originally ahoy was ahhh, but then the spell check changed it, and I realized how wonderful it is) the many uses of literacy. Today I rode to school, and it was all rather joyous. I was over my hangover and well rested. Are you waiting for the conflict? The part that makes the story? Well, there really is none. I rode past birds, and in about thirty seconds of listening hard I heard five or six different songs. I rode past a burger king box that was moving slightly in the wind so that it looked like a scorpion. Right after that I rode past a pair of legs that I think belonged to some kind of space toy. Then I kept riding and was actually early for my work out with Dylan. So, there we go. No conflict in my day. But we need conflict to move the plot along, don't we? In order for me to grow, and evolve I need some suspense and a little something dirty, a moment of danger, and then a glorious resolution. If I am to take the lead role... So I made my own. Conflict that is. Not in a very dramatic way. It was a quiet personal struggle that involved the demons of academia and some really tough theory. I believe I won though, well kinda. Maybe the battle, not the war. I say this because I felt my heart rate go up, my eyes glazed with cool gleam, with the intensity of connections burning into my soul and ideas that are so radical, so intense. I want to scream at them, "ARE YOU LISTENING?? THE WORLD IS SO DELICATE AND CONSTRUCTED. WE ARE NOT REAL." But really, I doubt it would have been appropriate. I mean, I know that we aren't real, I know that the world is a construct and a delicate balance of consensus... But I don't know if everyone does. I am just aghast at the way it comes back over and over and over and over. Repeat please. Yes. Now, I am working of breaking out of the construct, understanding it on all levels, finding loop holes in the whole of it. I'll be late, but really, just late for a more blatant construction, a game of more clear intensions.
I watched light today, as it reflected breathing off of many things. There was a line in a reading that made my breath catch, and I wish I had written it...
"She said she would have liked to rest on the grass of his chest." and another, "The worst was that he felt ridiculous from the moment that the greatest dream was emerging from the depths of his being."
May you have a great dream tonight love, sleep into it, sigh and seep, and wake knowing nothing...

2004-02-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

Everything is slow this morning, and distracted. I stayed up very late, and woke up fairly early, and now there is a barrier between me and the real world. Its a gentle cushion that blurs the edges, and it feels like it's slightly patronizing. Only three fourths of the way awake, and already the day looks long.

When I got home from Denver this Sunday I received a gift. Sitting on our kitchen table was a lovely plant for me, and cut flowers for my other female roommate. Thank you mysterious stranger(s), I have it in my office now, in a warm and sunny, but not in direct sunlight place. This is taking far too long to write, slow fingers, slow mind. I have far too much to do to have slow mind today...

Nothing is making sense, and my mind is too fragmented today... Maybe tonight it will have settled...

2004-02-13T00:13:00.000-07:00

I was in a pink ball gown with black lace over top. It is lovely, sleeveless, and fantastic. I was also in a full length ball gown that is black, with white and pink in the back. It is classical, something that blank and white movie stars would wear. You see, while I was at my aunt's over thanksgiving she forced these two dresses on me, saying, "You never know when you will really need to dress up." And indeed, I plan to wear one of them this weekend, just to be obnoxious. Now, however, I have left both of them sitting in my purple velvet chair in my room, and have donned my blue silk kimono. Its late at night, I need something cool and soft. Sometimes, there is a crazy fascination with the opulence in which we all live, and I take full advantage of it. For example, I bought blank plether high heel lace up boots today. This may sound like just an odd list of clothing, and maybe it is, but it is also pieces of me. I watch what people choose to don themselves in. I think that it speaks about them, even in a subtle way. Where is that symbol from, around your neck or snuggly tied quietly around your wrist? What is the story of that worn t-shirt, and those jeans with all the wholes (holes) and patches? Where did you get that tattoo? Why? Was there something that you needed burned onto your soul? Those shoes have character, they are brazen or red or scuffed. Are they carrying you away from me, or to me?

I plan to try on different me's this weekend, dress to fit a character which is clearly a piece but not everyday. It takes to much work to be my diva, sex goddess, prowler everyday. Taxing. I am just a regular goddess on a regular day most of the time (did you not notice? Well, goddess are silent and stealthy, they look like the rest of us most of the time). certainly time for black plether lace up high heel boots...

I have been getting an odd high in class lately. It is an electric charge that starts in my knees and moves into my stomach and chest. It seems to be brought on as ideas and synthesis conforms into my world, and as the world expands to meet the possibilities that are. It makes me grin. It makes me talk too loud, to let out and away the thought of it, the need of it. I worry sometimes, that I will be thought a freak, for being so overjoyed at the moment of potencial understanding. When I know that my energy, my excitement, is just being broadcast through my skin and out into the room. I am vibrating with the connections... Quantum. I have been coming home over and over again to the idea that when we look at reality we are making it static, just as we do when measuring sub atomic particles. I keep coming home to fractals- images in ideas in images in ideas, and these things that come back to us over and over, a pattern that we cant begin to understand, and yet live in. Words that are changing my mind, not just altering my opinion, but possibly altering the mind in which meaning functions. Surely they alter the brain, each pulse and firing that flashed in, changing it in tiny bumps and eye lash flutters.

These two rants seem to conflict, but in fact they are part of the same idea. I am trying on world views, slipping in and out of roles, dancing through realities, and I plan to enjoy it.

2004-02-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

I am attempting to republish my blog in the hope of getting a comments place up... since I'm really curious who the hell I'm talking to...

2004-02-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

My body is sore. I did a rock star workout with Dylan last night, and then we worked out again this morning. I am starting to miss riding my bike. I go through phases with it where I will ride all the time everywhere, and then I quit for a week or two, normally corresponding with crappy weather. The weather is clearing up. I'll have to ride in tomorrow morning.

Sometimes I crouch down in the shower. I bring myself as low to the bottom of the bath tub as I can and feel the shower more like it's rain. I do this sometimes when I'm sad, and I feel like its too hard to stand up. I do this when I am really tired occationally, after I have washed my hair and smell like mint soap. The other day I crouched low and watched the water coming off the edge of the tub. It ran in crazy rivers, merging and opening again. I watched the water as it ran out of my hair that was a hanging cave grotto through which I witnessed the dynamic chaos of water. I could change things just by standing up, make the rivers flow differently, but could control nothing. I watched my feet against the yellow lighting and beige bath. I moved my consciousness to my back, where moons cascade down my spine in thirteen perfect circles. Felt the water running past the ink raised marks, and off to where my mind did not reach. Its comforting some times, to bring my thought full into the moment.

Sometimes my mind plays while I walk or lay in bed. Plays with high stress crisis situations. What would I do if bombs fell on campus tonight while I was in class? Do I organize the survivors, giving strong commands that save those of us that live? Do I cower thinking about the implications? In my mind today I lit a cigarette off of the flaming building and watched, once the crews were there and I was no longer pulling people out, watched the flames of war dance into the night. I though about rage, and moving all my people into our house (I think that we have the biggest house). Bring everyone for safety and comfort, collecting food, and wondering why the campus was a target. Maybe there were experiments going on in the sciences, things that the enemy wanted destroyed. Maybe it was just war. One long run across Colorado going from Colorado springs, through Denver to us. Maybe they'll hit Wyoming too. I don't think we'll find out for a while, as the power is out everywhere, and too many phone lines were cut. I use my bike, and gather my people to me. I run to the dorm and make sure Dylan made it. She has, as this isn't a fantasy to cry over, but my post apocalyptic theme.

Sometimes I will have long story thoughts meant to make me feel pain. I used to do it a lot, when I was little and a teenager. Kill off people, have someone take me out of class while I was at school, and tell me what had happened. I would make myself feel the fear and pain and deep deep sadness. I would end up sobbing into my pillow in the dark. I don't know why I did that. Maybe just to feel. I don't do it so often anymore.

I have many themes that I play with in my mind. I have romances, and fantasy, and adventures, and rarely mysteries. Mysteries aren't as fun when you have to think up all the twists and turns yourself. They become too hard to keep track of. I will run into a scene that I really like, and play it over several times to see why I liked it, play with the lighting. I don't think that I have ever articulated this tendency outloud before. It seems natural, most do this, right? Hummm. Something to ponder. I am procrastinating. Damn. I better go focus on reading, huh?

2004-02-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

I wasn't suppose to post last night. I tried and tried to sign on and it wouldn't let me. Its hard coming home sometimes. Makes me tired. Makes my heart weary. Its an odd kind of rest that sits like a heavy meal after days of pushing to the limit; comforting, but stoney and a little painful. I have to sit on two phone books to be at the proper height to type.

I dreampt of waves the other night. I dream of them a lot, recurring. The sea is chaotic, huge waves that are ten, twenty or fifty feet high. When I was young they used to be tsunami's, but now they are just a wild ocean. It is always in a cove, or sea cave, or inlet. The color of the light might be dusk, but its not. It is a different realm. It is shades of brown, and still has color. The ocean in this place is always loud, and I am looking at the waves from the beach. Soon there are others there, walking. Sometimes there are people in the water, sometimes I brave the water, and the waves lift you up in a feeling of uncontrollable panic and then back down. The other night I was afraid that Dylan would get taken by the undertow, I was hit several times, but I made it to the far side of the cove where people were watching the sea from behind a rock outcropping. Dylan almost made it but was hit by a wave. I was terrified, and then it hit her, and she was barely lifted off her feet and set back down. In that dream, during a different part, there was a boy fighting a dragon. He turned it to ice and when it melted it made a pond. I cried last night before falling asleep. I haven't done that for a while. My chest just ached, if you know what I mean. It was with an everything that I wasn't prepared for, memories that I hadn't prepared for. I should have known. Coming home is never the same, but its always seeped in things that might have been a shadow, and things that smell like dried lavender, slides of your past you want or want away that want you to see them. There are days when I wake up smelling the future, sage and smoke and sweat and raspberries, just out in front. Its so real when its there. I don't think that I can describe the longing and physical tension, a thought before an erotic shiver, keeping me tight and ready for every second that is to come. I become so deeply enchanted with possibility: possibility. Every way, in the moment, the everything nothing flash of un questioned fluttering gasping throat lowe rback and upper thigh sigh of possibility. Then there are days when my subconscious plays back Morgan home movie classics over and over, till I feel like I am folding in, and I am afraid. I am afraid of all those lost moments that I was so excited about, and how they are now held still in frames of my mind. Like a thousand million butterflies that might be, condensed into one green brown moth that was. Not that I don't try to live, and there are some irridesent winged moments of my short life, but sometimes life gets in the way of living. So I cried, and felt cold in my parents house on a role away bed. I felt lonely. It hurts, trying to keep my eyes opened, trying to stay awake with this pressure on, its worth it, but it hurts...

2004-02-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

I have been having a useless day. I have been trying hard to do homework, be productive, think and be focused. Its useless. You see, its cold outside. Humans, for generations (those that had to deal with winter), spend cold shitty days sitting inside, cooking, weaving, and telling stories. Then we got stupid annoying things like electricity and heat and indoor plumbing and everything went down hill. Now I can sit in front of the black box, writing for all the world to see, but I weave for crap, and I'm not very good at starting a fire, even with the fire fluid. I'm an angry bunny, truth be told. Why? No reason, other then its healthy to be slightly peeved occationally. I expect it will abate.

WHY ISN'T IT JUNE DAMN IT?! Those of you that are practical will say something about the spinning of the earth, or our tilt, or the way we need winter to renew life. The rest of us, the real people who are not sciences slaves, recognize this winter thing for what it really is: BULLSHIT. The fact of the matter is, not too long ago, winter didn't happen. It was created to make people more dependent on the government, and to increase blanket sales. You see, animals are scarcer during the winter, so people have to work together to get food to last it out (IE organized gov comes in). Before, when winter was a day a year where everyone drank really cold brewed drinks and slept all day (In Latin Winter means "Day of inebriated Sleep") we didn't need to work together. We just got together to party. Then, a power hungry person who was most likely from Canada called his shamans and his inventors together and they started a mass consciousness altering program to convince people that winter was about 5 months of the year and involved cold white water falling from the sky. When a certain critical level was reached the reality of the world changed and we got this. The power hungry Canadian made a fortune on blanket sales, and the rest of us are still suffering.

I'm going to go hibernate.

2004-02-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

I am listening to a KBCO song that involves a Vincent 52 motorcycle. I think that it is what brought on my bike dream the other night. My iris bloom died. The purple turned to a grey white.

Do you remember when you started to understand symbolism? I was fairly little and my family was going to a wedding. My mom and dad wrapped the present and I brought out some dried roses that I had to decorate the top. My parents said no way. For me they were a dried treasure, carefully kept. To my parents, the death of the flower is what stood out. When they explained to me that a rose is love, and a dead one is not a good sign, then I began to understand symbols.

Think of when we were barely literate in symbol systems, when things just were. The world was a literal moment, devoid of hidden meaning because we did not give it hidden meaning. Now, a word is more powerful, covered in not only cultural meaning, but seeped in the dust of our own experience. Like when love was just for family, and dog, and cat. Then it spread, became more. It became enjoyment of things- strawberries and light and music. It became sex and longing, sweaty moments of undiscovered palpitation. Eventually it became all these things and an undertook of pain, fear of being without, nostalgic sighs and a memory of possibility. Layers and layers. In most other languages there is more then one word for love. There is love of friends, love of a lover, love of family, love of a thing or activity, love of your baby. Love for every occation. In our culture we have only one word, that is suppose to mean all things. I think it cheapens the word, makes it ring less true and deep. When you can say, "I love that commercial!" and you can say, "I love you." Well, that's just not right. Now my love has to encompass so much that is trivial, and so much that is the basis for heart ache, and so much joy. How can we expect to understand each other in this world, with this barrier of meaning? And what does it say about a culture that has this one love, but it has a plethora of very specific words for fight, war, battle. I know, I just looked them up. The words that we are given for love, are not really love at all. But the words for fight, for attack, for destroy... Well they are numerous.

I need a warm day and a sunset that makes things look clear and red. I also need to go to class...

2004-02-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

How common are we? Those that learn to learn, that seek knowledge because it is, knowing, perhaps only, that there will be no end to that knowledge. How common are those that truly understand, "There are more things in heaven and earth..." That we seek knowledge for the pureness of seeking, and for no other reason? The question is the reason, and the answer is a bonus for asking.

My guitar is watching me forelornly from the back of the library. Maybe I need to go play.

When I speak to my daughter to be, will I weigh out each word, knowing that what I speak is embedded with history and blood and thought? When I write a letter to my daughter to be, will my pen speak to her out of time, bonding my utterances with many voices? Will any of us make it that far?

Last night I dreamed I was a pregnant elf with a motorcycle. I saw Hunter Thompson and had to get out of town fast (not because of Hunter Thompson, but some people meant me harm. You could just tell). When I was leaving the hotel, and my money had been stolen, I went into a room to say good bye to some fellow mythical peoples. I shook the hand of an old hunter, that wore silver rings on all his nut brown fingers, and I shook the hand of a night child, and a woman there gave me some magickal juniper berry, and I was suppose to just keep it but instead I ate it like a sunflower seed. I wanted to drive the bike out of town, but a friend said she would drive. Not all of our gear was attached right, and she went anyway, even though I asked her to stop. She rode like a mad woman, with me above and behind, and I saw in advance she would be crashing soon. As I caught up with my perspective on the bike I grasped a light pole and slid down it unharmed. I had been worried about the baby, but it would be fine. I was an elf, in a high desert town that was dirty and neon, with short hair and leathers, pregnant with a miracle child.

2004-01-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

Do you like soda fuzz? I've always loved it. I enjoy pouring the soda into a glass of ice and drinking the fuzz of the top as it forms. I was a little disturbed when I realized how much of the soda you imbibe when you slurp up fuzz. It feels like nothing, but half the glass is gone when its all over.

What are the metaphors that I use to look at my life? I tend to think that Joseph Campbell is the bomb, and that the myths of our world do repeat themselves over and over again. Maybe I look at myself as the hero, or maybe I look at myself as the villain. Maybe I am both, all the characters really, and I am making the story as I go. Each test making me stronger, building up to what? In the myth the hero gets to go home at the end, live happily ever after, be done. In that case, is death going home? Are there hero's that run away? That flee from the dragon, and run from the ogre, and still get the prize in the end? What are my ogres, who are my dragons? I think that I also use the metaphor of text to examine my life. The world is a text, and each thing has meaning if it is brought into focus. In a novel, if the author spends a crazy amount of time on the description of the butterfly, you could assume that they meant it to have meaning. I think that the meaning comes from your own context, from the cultural context from which you observe the butterfly, but the meaning is there. Is it then possible that the author and the reader bring meaning to the text? That the author uses words, format, conventions, timing, novelty, displacement, to bring to light a meaning that they are trying to convey? And that in doing that, the reader is more focused towards that meaning, but still is interpreting the personal truth in their own context and life. All this battle between reader response and expressivism, seems silly. I think that we are entering a new age. I think that it is new, because I have never heard of a similar age in history, though there could be one. It seems, that everything that I learn about the past went from fact to questions, to a new fact. Reality became more and more static. Now, I heard whispers and thoughts and theories about a new way to move through thought. Maybe, just is it possible, that it is a combination? I litany of many truths? Our post structuralists would claim there is no truth, that everything is so dependent, that meaning so fluid, that it is no truth and all truth- therefore no truth. I would say that is bull shit. There are things that can be truth, and they can seem like contradicting truths and still be truth. There can be a god, and there can be science. There can be light, and there can be dark, and there can be a hell of a lot of grey in between. Why do we insist on a right and left world, when it clearly is neither? Chaos or order, but both, intertwined, making things hella more fun. I believe in this: magick and science and fate and coincidence and dreams and waking and winter and sadness and violence and peace. All of it is here, in front of us and with us. Is that a cop out? Because I am not brave enough to believe that there is nothing? In the middle. All stories exist there. Ours does too... In fractal theory we are all parts of the equation. Universal patterns reflected in us over and over. Can we know truth by looking at a tiny grain of sand or a word or a star or a mind? This pattern, if there is a pattern, would fill everything.

I asked a friend, "so, if god created everything, and before god there was nothing but god, then everything must have been made from god, cause there was nothing before that but god and his will, and even if it isn't made out of gods left thigh, but his will, that is still god." We were walking down a lush road, green and clear. I was living in a T-P at the time I think. "So," says I, "If I lay homage to this tree, am I not laying homage to god? The same god that you do, but I call it tree and you call it Jesus?" "No, she says, if this world is a painting, God is the painter, but the paint is not God." "But then where did he get the damn paint?" "He made it." "Out of what? It had to be out of him, because before that there was only him." "Nope." "What?" "No, he just painted it. If you worship the painting and not the creator that's all wrong." "No, go back to the paint, there had to be paint. Molecules, and lights, and star dust, all had to come from somewhere. I will buy that it came from god, or his will, but I will not buy that it is not him." "Nope, its not." Thus, why I cant be Christian, but do believe in the patterns, the pieces of divine creation and destruction in every breath and thought and mini iris. Its in bloom by the way. Delicate and rich purple, like breathing dream nights. With white a yellow highlighting its delicate sex. Yum. I need to go meet Dylan, but one more quick thought.

I dreampt last night that I was being held against my will by a Columbian drug lord in Iowa. This has happened before in the dream, so I knew what to do. Don't go through the waterfall cave with the octopus spirit, do go down the rope first, jumping down the vegetated cliff, and carry a knife. Ignore the fact that the rope is too short, you get down anyway, and know that you will be caught and forced to use the knife. So despite the fact that I was in high heels I went first with the knife, going over the top of the waterfall, and down the lush hill. At the bottom the a big thug was there. I knew I would be homefree if I could get to civilization. I tried to yell out a warning to my fellows at the top, and though my voice was feeble, my old dog Jane heard it and stood up. Dylan pulled her down. I stabbed the big man once, and recognized my savior walking up. He is a very handsome Italian man that I have met in my dreams before, though he failed to recognize me. I stabbed the big man again. The knife only went in about an inch each time, but it was enough and he ran away. In the zero degree ending that all dreams have I was flying on a plane, going home, watching as we flew over an iceberg and the sunset was making it glow orange. On the side of the iceberg was a space shuttle landing and dropping under the water. I pointed this out to my Italian companion, though he didn't see what was so conspiracy theory cool about it. So I kissed him with the taste of honey on my lips and entered the waking world...

2004-01-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Walking up my stairs in the dark this evening I encountered a sweetness. That's how I knew that my hyacinth had bloomed while I was away. The stem where the flowers unfolded looks like a pomegant hush when the seeds are gone. An empty pleasure. I don't know how my paper whites are doing, the water looks like a primordial soup. Hopfully they will bloom, and grow. Hopfully we all will.

Its scary sometimes, when I think about all the things that I distance myself from to function, to keep moving. I am thinking about women, sisters, still out there getting hurt. I am thinking about war. I am thinking about friends, and people I will never know, at war. I am thinking about quiet that's too strong, that you have to scream and scream and it still holds on. I don't know if I am even screaming out loud. I am also thinking about pomegranat flowers, and the weird plant my mother gave me that sprouts babies and new branches from the tips of its ruffled leaves. I am thinking about context, mine, and the story I'm living. How would we read that text? How do I read it. Quiet and peaceful, rich and healthy in a country that is quiet and green. When there are snipits of news in that story, when there is an undertone of darkness our main character doesn't have to face, and when there are floating bits of mythology and magick, what does the reader make of it? Am I the author? What should our main character do? Should she drop everything and run off on a quest? But the story has so many twists and turns, nothing is that simple. The reader knows that.

Its cold out tonight. My fingers are just warming up after being outside. They still have that haunted cold fog laying around them. My whole body really has that cold floating feeling. Tingling surreal freezing fuzz. Masterfully crafted outsideness. And this text, this abbreviated version of what is, why is it? Why am I writing, and to whom? Not just here, but in my journal too. I have always had someone listening to these long rambles, someone wondering what will happen next, waiting with bated breath. There could be many listeners right now, and there could be none.

Like writing on slips of paper, folding them into perfectly crafted boats and letting them float downstream. Maybe every one of them goes under, to be read by nothing but sand and time, or maybe everyone of them gets caught in a reedy net. They float and swirl in the current, turn three bends that are both wide and fast, and then edge to the left hand bank. There the water pushes them gently into an eddie, and the twist and dance, just as the bottom of the paper is beginning to soak in wet. They land like ocean liners on a tiny beach, boulders of pebbles and cliffs of sand. Someone collects them there. Unfolds them carefully and sets them on an old off white kitchen towel in the corner of the mud room to dry. When there is no trace of damp on them, and only then, they read them. All these paper thoughts sent out, and when the paper drys this person sits on a purple chair that is faded on one side. The chair is heavily stuffed with old cotton batting that leaks out of a dog chewed corner. Rabbit soft evening light falls through the windows smudged with dog nose prints and finger swirls. They sit in that chair, like putting on old jeans or a flannel shirt, and they read my thoughts.

2004-01-25T13:20:00.000-07:00

What does it say about a person when they bribe themselves with the promise of being able to get online and write? I emerge from a sleep stupor at 11:00am and streach and make a series of sleepy mammal sounds. I get up, throw on some clothes, and get out "Recent Theories of Narrative" by Wallace Martin.
"Ok Morgan, if you can get through 1/4 of the book you can get online and do a posting." So I began with the light part. In the back there are some short stories to give context to the narrative theories that are being proposed in the book. An urban legend/modern folk tale, some Chaucer, and a light tale called "Bliss" by Katherine Mansfield. I am in a pretty good mood, having found some way to do homework and still be reading fiction, ploughing through Bliss. Its not a long story, and I knew that I would be done too soon if I kept up the pace, but the writing was manic-ly fast. The words skipped along, telling the story of this woman who is so entranced with her life. She is experiencing the flame of joy that burrows into your collar bone when you are just high on life. I wont ruin the ending for you, but I will say that I had to go out and have a cigg and reconsider reading unknown fiction early in the morning.
My hyacinth is beginning to come out. I think that it will be white, but right now the flowers are a pale green that can only be spring. The smell of hyacinth. Yum. Its so amazing, that for me at least, it can border on sickly sweet without passing over. It is sensual in its nearness to being too much, and when I breath it in I can feel it wrapping my frontal lobes in hot wet sugared air.
This space that I'm in will be a haven. Sitting at a desk, with three glorious south facing windows opening onto our street. There will be green, and I can watch the wind and if I sit here everyday, I can watch my plants grow, time lapsed, emerging.
These are not very fluid entries, but who asked for fluidity? These are just thoughts, and once I press the publish button, or maybe even as I finish typing the keys to make the words, I cease to exist. Then it is just others, or no one, reading and tying these words into their own view, text, context. Some would claim that I cease to exist. For all intensive purposes, I think I would agree.
Three snow flakes just blew past my window. That must be a signal to leave off for now. Its winter, its cold, there is no time for out. Conserve your energy, hold in, be quiet, quieter then keys tapping, quieter then the hum of the black box. Even that tenuous electric bond is too much. Its time to travel in, shhh. The essence of Sunday I think.

2004-01-24T16:40:00.000-07:00

You may or may not have figured out that I am an avid journal-er. I have been keeping journals since the summer before I began highschool, so since 1995. For Christmas/ birthday this year I cleaned out the attic in my parents house. 2 days of intensive memory releasing drugery. At one point I found my journals. I think that I have about 20 volumes, some written in code, some tear stained, some scrawled, some neatly and tightly written. It's slightly traumatizing whenever I go back and read them.

When women give birth it is (and this may be an obvious statement) extremely painful. Not just a little painful, but one of the most painful things ever. Not having done it, this is as descriptive as I can get. Women are not dumb, and unless you are an endorphine junky this kind of pain is ridiculous. So how does birth keep happening? Science has recently told us (and I can't sight a source, sorry) that during childbirth a chemical is released that acts as a memory suppressant. Basically, you reach a certain pain level, and your there, and its horrible, and you forget all of the things you said about it being sacred, you stop being a goddess and start hating everything because this pain is seeping through your entire soul. Then, when it is over, this chemical starts kicking that basically lets you recall that it hurt, it hurt a lot, but other than that its really rather vague.

What I'm wondering is, looking back at these journals I can hear myself howling in emotional turmoil. There are passages where I look back and remember how dark and hopeless and terrible I felt, for any number of reasons. Some of this was pure angst, pangs of teenage-ness that happen. Others, well it just hurt. Do we create some sort of memory block, something that lets us forget pain? You may be thinking, "Ummm, yeah. Have you learned anything about psychology, cause that's called repression, or is something Freudian or something." Yeah, I know, but think about it. Think about the last time you were really hurting, and think about how you were there, in the moment, full on in this icky emotion. Or for that matter, when your heart was soaring, stupid fast beating at the thought of another person, their smell, dreams where you wake up from flying and everything is permeated with magick. These emotional peaks or valleys are clearly not where we spend our lives, or not most of us. They seem to fade, become surreal, until they come again. They are memories of an emotion, without the emotion part, like food without flavor, or sleep without dreaming. Where does that go? When emotion is there, it is there, and personally I can do very little to stop it. It is a pure moment.

I have a tarot card (this deck called "Morgan's Tarot" that was given to me long ago and has served me very well) that says "illegitimate Feelings." When you read about the card, here is the joke, feelings can't be illegitimate- they just are. What you feel is. Just is. You can't have a feeling you are not suppose to have because emotions are just that, pure, free. Now, say you are a woman who has body issues and you feel embarrassed at the beach because of it. Some may argue that you should not be feeling this, yes? That it is a social construct. However, you are feeling it. Plain, simple, that emotion is. Emotions seem to manifestations of the present, even if they are triggered by the past or future. They are. There. Now. Could this be why our memories of life's pains, and joys, become hollow, or less full? They are slide shows of the beach, devoid of the immersion that is the beach. Emotions are a beach?

If you are still with this rant, I congratulate you. I think that it would be almost an example of train of thought writing. One last comment. I had a dream my freshman year of college. The details are hazy but I stepped out of the dorm and the sun was out, and it was snowing very faintly, and there was a small black boy standing by a bench. He looked up at me and said "Be," but at that moment it was all things: it was "B", "b", "Be", and "Bee". What do zen monks mean when they say "just be"...

2004-01-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

So I asked dylan for a propmt. "What, dear sister, should I write on today?" Her response was, "How about not wearing any underwear." "Lots of people are reading this list... I sent it out to a couple list serves that I'm on, not really expecting it to get looked at but..." "Well, how about chess... Or chess and not wearing any underwear?" Sound fair. Here goes (aren't prompts fun?).
What I postulate is that a chess master who does not wear underwear is more likely to win. This, I would claim, is based on the fact that anyone who has gone with out undergarments will admit that it gives a certain degree of freedom. When one has no skivies on, there is a daring anti culture feeling. This may be subconscious, but it is there none the less. You are obviously going against cultural norms, giving yourself a degree of exposure, even if it is hidden to all but yourself. So, you sit down, facing your opponent, ready for an epic battle. You stare into their eyes, attempting to create a facsimile of a icy death stare, and begin. You are wearing no underwear. You are on the cutting edge, a throwback to wild times, an animal. Animals are able to better tap their instigate tactics. As the game progresses your tightly bound opponent is constantly baffled at the way you weave in and out of their anally constructed traps. You dance, float, dodge, role, and in the end back them it to a corner. This is not merely Chess! This is a battle to save your young, a battle for food and air, this is a battle for life. This is the advantage that going bare holds for you.
I feel confident that if scientific studies were done, it could be proven that not only underwear-less chess is more successful, but that in any competitive aspect of life it gives you an advantage... Except possibly some sports... That could just be uncomfortable.

2004-01-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Good morning friday! So last week I was in seattle visiting a friend. I walked everywhere in one pair of less than stellar boots, but did see a fair portion of the area. It was my last night there, and we walked into the university district to see Big Fish. When I want to see a movie, I get somewhat compulsive about it. It was Big Fish or nothing damn it. So, we walked, and stood in a very long line filled with hip people, and then were very hungry after. We stoppped by a market to grab some food to cook at my Tod's sister's abode, and there, in the plant section, was a mini iris. It was so fantastic that I stared at it until Tod came to find out what was so great. Tiny pot, perfectly formed little flowers, all under six inches high. The jittery super market lights that are universal slowed to a constant summer glow, and shown in a halo about this science fiction strange wonder. What artistic genetic scientist had thought this up? The spell was broken once Tod pointed out that it would not enjoy flying at all. Alas. I thought that it was just a Washington thing, seeing as you think about a seed there and it grows. Most things are not, of course, as perfectly small as this plant was, but what could be. I went home, happy that I would see the sun, over joyed that it would be dry, jumping excitedly that I would see my friends, but slightly mournful that I would most likely never again see a mini iris. Yet, the next night, as I powel our very own super market plant section, trying to buy myself some flowers that will not wilt (or at least will live to bloom again) mini iris. They sit now on my desk, in the pale winter light, getting misted occationally by my loving hand. Peace.

2004-01-22T17:40:00.000-07:00

Here, in class, this very instant (5:52pm according to my watch) we are all making blogs. The current topic of posting is our first memory. Hum. I can recall my sister coming home from the hospital. I can see the inside of the car, and Dylan, still slightly rinkled and pink, eyes closed in a hospital blanket in the back seat with me. I think that I was riding in a car seat, as there is a grey plastic edge in the corner of my eye. The inside of the car is hughs of brown. My mom isnt there, but I think that my da' is in the front seat. I know that my mom wasnt there, as she had to stay in the hospital after Dylan was born. We were both C-sections, and my mom didnt recover well after that second time out. I think that this would be my first memory, though I have a very early memory of growth. I recall walking by the counter that wound around our kitchen. We lived, for the first eight years of my life, in an old house in denver. The kitchen was huge (or my body and perspective small). There were red tiles on the floor, and a wood stove in one corner. The smell was a cool musty, the smell that comes from dust and red tiles and colorado light. I walked by this counter through the swinging door every day, and it was always at eye level. I can see the dark brown crushed wood bits that were on the edge, and the white under coating of thegreen plastic top. And then this memory, of one day being slightly higher. The edge was no longer level with my line of sight, it had shrunken, or I had grown. I could just see the sun slanting in from the sky light, heavy motes of dust drifting through what must have been a summer day (the light had the rich red tones that do not appear untill after june 21st) and settling on the TOP of the counter. There was mail there, white paper, still higher then me. I paused, and took a breath, and hear clearly in my mind, "I have grown." I think that it must have been one of the first deeply seated self reflective thoughts. There is an old home movie with Dylan in the kitchen. It is her birthday, which is in december. Out the window in the yard you can see my father and I making various snow things. On that side of the yard was a plant box with bleeding hearts in it, but another entry yeah? So Dylan is sitting in the kitchen, with her birthday dress on, and my mom asks her "So, how does it feel to be three?" and Dylan holds up her hand, palm up as if some precious stone or snowflake sat there, gazes at it, and in a calm voice says, "bunny." My sister is a buddah, and I am overjoyed that she is my first memory.